This was the beginning of a desultory conversation carried on at intervals between the two young gentlemen, of which, though Bill heard every sentence, he couldn’t understand one.  He made one effort to discover what Master Arthur was alluding to, but with no satisfactory result, as we shall see.

“Please, Master Arthur,” he said desperately, “you don’t think there’ll be two ghosts, do you, Sir?”

“I should say,” said Master Arthur, so slowly and with such gravity that Bill felt sure he was making fun of him, “I should say, Bill, that if a place is haunted at all there is no limit to the number of ghosts—­fifty quite as likely as one.  What do you say, Bartram?”

“Quite so,” said Bartram.

Bill made no further attempts to understand the mystery.  He listened, but only grew more and more bewildered at the dark hints he heard, and never understood what it all meant until the end came; when (as is not uncommon) he wondered how he could have been so stupid, and why he had not seen it all from the very first.

They had now reached the turning-point, and as they passed into the dark lane, where the wind was shuddering and shivering among the trees, Bill shuddered and shivered too, and felt very glad that the young gentlemen were with him, after all.

Mr. Lindsay pulled out his watch.

“Well?” said his friend.

“Ten minutes to nine.”

Then they walked on in silence, Master Arthur with one arm through his friend’s, and the one-legged donkey under the other; and Mr. Lindsay with his hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“I should like a pipe!” said Master Arthur presently; “it’s so abominably damp.”

“What a fellow you are,” said Mr. Lindsay.  “Out of the question!  With the wind setting down the lane too! you talk of my cough—­which is better, by-the-bye.”

“What a fellow you are!” retorted the other.  “Bartram, you are the oddest creature I know.  What ever you take up, you do drive at so.  Now I have hardly got a lark afloat before I’m sick of it.  I wish you’d tell me two things—­first, why are you so grave to-night? and, secondly, what made you take up our young friend’s cause so warmly?”

“One answer will serve both questions,” said Mr. Lindsay.  “The truth is, old fellow, our young friend—­[and Bill felt certain that the ‘young friend’ was himself]—­has a look of a little chap I was chum with at school—­Regy Gordon.  I don’t talk about it often, for I can’t very well; but he was killed—­think of it, man!—­killed by such a piece of bullying as this!  When they found him, he was quite stiff and speechless; he lived a few hours, but he only said two words—­my name, and amen.”

“Amen?” said Master Arthur, inquiringly.

“Well, you see when the surgeon said it was no go, they telegraphed for his friends; but they were a long way off, and he was sinking rapidly; and the old Doctor was in the room, half heart-broken, and he saw Gordon move his hands together, and he said, ’If any boy knows what prayers Gordon minor has been used to say, let him come and say them by him;’ and I did.  So I knelt by his bed and said them, the old Doctor kneeling too and sobbing like a child; and when I had done, Regy moved his lips and said ‘Amen;’ and then he said ‘Lindsay!’ and smiled, and then—­”