“I’ve been in Cliffe Royal, and we’ve seen the ghost.”

The Champion gave a whistle.

“That’s the game, is it?” said he.  “Did you have speech with it?”

“It vanished first.”

The Champion whistled once more.

“I’ve heard there is something of the sort up yonder,” said he; “but it’s not a thing as I would advise you to meddle with.  There’s enough trouble with the folk of this world, Boy Jim, without going out of your way to mix up with those of another.  As to young Master Rodney Stone, if his good mother saw that white face of his, she’d never let him come to the smithy more.  Walk slowly on, and I’ll see you back to Friar’s Oak.”

We had gone half a mile, perhaps, when the Champion overtook us, and I could not but observe that the bundle was no longer under his arm.  We were nearly at the smithy before Jim asked the question which was already in my mind.

“What took you up to Cliffe Royal, uncle?”

“Well, as a man gets on in years,” said the Champion, “there’s many a duty turns up that the likes of you have no idea of.  When you’re near forty yourself, you’ll maybe know the truth of what I say.”

So that was all we could draw from him; but, young as I was, I had heard of coast smuggling and of packages carried to lonely places at night, so that from that time on, if I had heard that the preventives had made a capture, I was never easy until I saw the jolly face of Champion Harrison looking out of his smithy door.

CHAPTER III—­THE PLAY-ACTRESS OF ANSTEY CROSS

I have told you something about Friar’s Oak, and about the life that we led there.  Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it.  I was in two minds when I began whether I had enough in me to make a book of, and now I know that I could write one about Friar’s Oak alone, and the folk whom I knew in my childhood.  They were hard and uncouth, some of them, I doubt not; and yet, seen through the golden haze of time, they all seem sweet and lovable.  There was our good vicar, Mr. Jefferson, who loved the whole world save only Mr. Slack, the Baptist minister of Clayton; and there was kindly Mr. Slack, who was all men’s brother save only of Mr. Jefferson, the vicar of Friar’s Oak.  Then there was Monsieur Rudin, the French Royalist refugee who lived over on the Pangdean road, and who, when the news of a victory came in, was convulsed with joy because we had beaten Buonaparte, and shaken with rage because we had beaten the French, so that after the Nile he wept for a whole day out of delight and then for another one out of fury, alternately clapping his hands and stamping his feet.  Well I remember his thin, upright figure and the way in which he jauntily twirled his little cane; for cold