the meaning of all this! cook—Mary—Mary! Answer me, instantly—what does it mean?"
Cook, who at first imagined that the figure had returned, now summoned sufficient courage to raise her head; and the first words she uttered, were—"The gho-o-o-ost!"
"The what!" cried Aunt Eleanor.
"Oh, ma'am!" said Mary; "oh, my good gracious me! Oh, we've been frightened to death, ma'am—a ghost has been here, ma'am—a real ghost! oh!"
"Nonsense, Mary; how can you be so simple?"
"We saw it come in, ma'am," interposed cook; "and we saw it go out. Oh, it was—horrid!"
"Tut, tut—what on earth can be the matter with you both?"
"We saw it, ma'am—indeed we did!—we both of us saw it, ma'am, with our own eyes!"
"You saw it in imagination, merely. But, how is it that you are not in bed before this? Why it's half-past eleven o'clock! Have you both been asleep?"
"No ma'am," replied cook, "Mary and me have been talking."
"I perceive—I perceive it all clearly; you have been talking about ghosts: now tell me the truth, is it not so?"
"We had been talking about what we'd heard, ma'am; but as to this! I never saw anything plainer in my life."
"Ridiculous, cook: I am surprised that a person of your years should not know better! What's that!" she exclaimed, on hearing a noise above, produced apparently by the falling of some heavy weight. "Ring the gardener's bell. There is something going on, which 1 don't understand. Ring the bell."
"Ye-e-es, ma'am." said Mary, who, having been filled with fresh alarm by the noise above, was afraid to move even to the rope—"I am so frightened!"
Aunt Eleanor herself rang the bell, but no answer was returned. She rang it again with additional violence, and again!—and again!—still no answer. She couldn't of course pretend to account for it. She thought it very strange; and as the world at large may also think it strange, it will be, perhaps, as well at once to explain the real cause.
It has been already stated that it was not long before Judkins got into bed again. Nor was it. He got in any how. Nor did he care how! he wasn't particular. His object was to get into bed, and he got in. But, being extremely anxious to conceal himself effectually, he darted beneath the clothes, which were all on one side, and there lay for a time motionless upon the very brink of the bedstead. Of this fact, however, he was perfectly unconscious, and therefore, when he did attempt to turn, he fell heavily upon the floor. That the ghost had induced this, he at that awful moment had not the slightest doubt. But he was into bed again in an instant, and there—of course utterly heedless of the bell—he remained in perfect silence, until his mistress, tired of ringing, came up to his bedroom door and knocked.
