I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly
dreamed out--there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a
born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream
as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."

"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell
you--"

"What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of?
I can't see the horror."

"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was
there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to
Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he
_should_ come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I
pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop
in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the
road--and it was Lord Hartledon."

"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come
out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"

"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."

Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of
calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster--who had not lived at Calne
since he came into the title--that he had thought of the old lord when
his wife was speaking.

"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon.
Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I
rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."

"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking
retort.

"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."

"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't
quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was
just as much young Hartledon as it was me."

"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell
you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as
shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."

"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once
Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it
was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"

"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and
always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste
bucket."

"_My_ belief is, that Rebecca made aw