She rose up, dried her eyes with her shawl, and Mr. Bourne proceeded onwards.  He had not gone far, when something came rushing past him from the opposite direction.  It seemed more like a thing than a man, with its swift pace—­and he recognised the face of Frederick Massingbird.

Mr. Bourne’s pulses stood still, and then gave a bound onwards.  Clergyman though he was, he could not, for his life, have helped the queer feeling which came over him.  He had sharply rebuked the superstition in his parishioners; had been inclined to ridicule Matthew Frost; had cherished a firm and unalterable belief that some foolish wight was playing pranks with the public; but all these suppositions and convictions faded in this moment; and the clergyman felt that that which had rustled past was the veritable dead and-gone Frederick Massingbird, in the spirit or in the flesh.

He shook the feeling off—­or strove to shake it.  That it was Frederick Massingbird in the flesh he did not give a second supposition to; and that it could be Frederick Massingbird in the spirit, was opposed to every past belief of the clergyman’s life.  But he had never seen such a likeness; and though the similarity in the features might be accidental, what of the black star?

He strove to shake the feeling off; to say to himself that some one, bearing a similar face, must be in the village; and he went on to his destination.  Mrs. Hook was better; but she was lying in the place unattended, all of them out somewhere or other.  The clergyman talked to her and read to her; and then waited impatiently for the return of Alice.  He did not care to leave the woman alone.

“Where are they all?” he asked, not having inquired before.

They were gone to the wake at Broxley, a small place some two miles distant.  Of course!  Had Mr. Bourne remembered the wake, he need not have put the question.

An arrival at last.  It was Jan.  Jan, attentive to poor patients as he was to rich ones, had come striding over, the last thing.  They asked him if he had seen anything of Alice in his walk.  But Jan had come across from Deerham Court, and that would not be the girl’s road.  Another minute, and the husband came in.  The two gentlemen left together.

“She is considerably better, to-night,” remarked Jan.  “She’ll get about now, if she does not fret too much over Alice.”

“It is strange where Alice can have got to,” remarked Mr. Bourne.  Her prolonged absence, coupled with the low spirits the girl appeared to be in, rather weighed upon his mind.  “I met her as I was coming here an hour ago,” he continued.  “She ought to have been home long before this.”

“Perhaps she has encountered the ghost,” said Jan, in a joke.

“I saw it to-night, Jan.”

“Saw what?” asked Jan, looking at Mr. Bourne.

“The—­the party that appears to be personating Frederick Massingbird.”

“Nonsense!” uttered Jan.