sion. And Matthew’s surmise, that the same thing might have alarmed Dan Duff, was perfectly probable. Mr. Bourne determined to ascertain the latter fact, as soon as Dan should be in a state of sufficient convalescence, bodily and mentally, to give an account. He had already paid one visit to Mrs. Duff’s—as that lady informed Lionel.
Two or three more he paid during the day, but not until night did he find Dan revived. In point of fact, the clergyman penetrated to the kitchen, just after the startling communication had been made by Dan. The women were standing in consternation when the vicar entered: one of them strongly recommending that the copper furnace should be heated, and Dan plunged into it to “bring him round.”
“How is he now?” began Mr. Bourne. “Oh! I see: he is sensible.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Duff. “I’m afraid as his head’s a-going right off. He persists in saying now that it wasn’t the ghost of Rachel at all, but—but somebody else’s.”
“If he was put into a good hot furnace, sir, and kep’ at a even heat up to biling point for half an hour—that is, as near biling as his skin could bear it—I know it ’ud do wonders,” spoke up Mrs. Chuff. “It’s a excellent remedy, where there’s a furnace convenient, and water not short.”
“Suppose you allow me to be alone with him for a few minutes,” suggested Mr. Bourne. “We will try and find out what will cure him, won’t we, Dan?”
The women filed out one by one. Mr. Bourne sat down by the boy, and took his hand. In a soothing manner he talked to him, and drew from him by gentle degrees the whole tale, so far as Dan’s memory and belief went. The boy shook in every limb as he told it. He could not boast immunity from ghostly fears like old Matthew Frost.
“But, my boy, you should know that there are no such things as ghosts,” urged Mr. Bourne. “When once the dead have left this world, they do not come back to it again.”
“I see’d it, sir,” was Dan’s only argument—an all-sufficient one with him. “It was stood over the pool, it was, and it turned round right upon me as I went up. I see the porkypine on his cheek, sir, as plain as anything.”
The same account as old Matthew’s!
“How was the person dressed?” asked Mr. Bourne. “Did you notice?”
“It had got on some’at long—a coat or a skirt, or some’at. ’Twas as thin as thin, sir.”
“Dan, shall I tell you what it was—as I believe? It was somebody dressed up to frighten you and other timid persons.”
Dan shook his head.
“No, sir, ’twasn’t. ’Twas the ghost of Mr. Frederick Massingbird.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII. MASTER CHEESE’S FRIGHT. OTHER FRIGHTS.
Strange rumours began to be rife in Deerham. The extraordinary news told by Dan Duff would have been ascribed to some peculiar hallucination of that gentleman’s brain, and there’s no knowing but what the furnace might have been tried as a cure, had not other testimony arisen to corroborate it. Four or five different people, in the course of as many days—or rather nights—saw, or professed to have seen, the apparition of Frederick Massingbird.
One of them was Master Cheese. He was coming home from paying a professional visit—in slight, straightforward cases Jan could trust him—when he saw by the roadside what appeared to be a man standing up under the hedge, as if he had taken his station there to look at the passers-by.
“He’s up to no good,” quoth Master Cheese to himself. “I’ll go and dislodge the fellow.”
Accordingly Master Cheese turned off the path where he was walking, and crossed the waste bit—only a yard or two in breadth—that ran by the side of the road. Master Cheese, it must be confessed, did not want for bravery; he had a great deal rather face danger of any kind than hard work; and the rumour about Fred Massingbird’s ghost had been rare nuts for him to crack. Up he went, having no thought in his head at that moment of ghosts, but rather of poachers.
“I say, you fellow—” he was beginning, and there he stopped dead.
He stopped dead, both in step and tongue. The figure, never moving, never giving the faintest indication that it was alive, stood there like a statue. Master Cheese looked in its face, and saw the face of the late Frederick Massingbird.
It is not pleasant to come across a dead man at moonlight—a man whose body has been safely reposing in the ground ever so long ago. Master Cheese did not howl as Dan Duff had done. He set off down the road—he was too fat to propel himself over or through the hedge, though that was the nearest way—he took to his heels down the road, and arrived in an incredibly short space of time at home, bursting into the surgery and astonishing Jan and the surgery boy.
“I say, Jan, though, haven’t I had a fright?”
Jan, at the moment, was searching in the prescription-book. He raised his eyes, and looked over the counter. Master Cheese’s face had turned white, and drops of wet were pouring off it—in spite of his bravery.
“What have you been at?” asked Jan.
“I saw the thing they are talking about, Jan. It is Fred Massingbird’s.”
Jan grinned. That Master Cheese’s fright was genuine there could be no mistaking, and it amused Jan excessively.
“What had you been taking?” asked he in his incredulity.
“I had taken nothing,” retorted Master Cheese, who did not like the ridicule. “I had not had the opportunity of taking anything—unless it was your medicine. Catch me tapping that! Look here, Jan. I was coming by Crow Corner, when I saw a something standing back in the hedge. I thought it was some poaching fellow hiding there, and went up to dislodge him. Didn’t I wish myself up in the skies? It was the face of Fred Massingbird.”
