riven back again. With a succession of yells, the
like of which had never been heard, save at the Willow Pond that night,
Dan appeared leaping down upon them, his legs naked and his short shirt
flying behind him. To be left alone, a prey to ghosts or their
remembrances, was more than the boy, with his consciousness upon him,
could bear. The women yelled also, and fell back one upon another; not a
few being under the impression that it was the ghost itself.

What was to be done with him? Before the question was finally decided,
Mrs. Bascroft, the landlady of the Plough and Harrow, who had made one
of the company, went off to her bar, whence she hastened back again with
an immense hot tumbler, three parts brandy, one part water, the whole of
which was poured down the throat of Dan.

"There's nothing like it for restoring folks after a fright," remarked
Mrs. Bascroft.

The result of the dose was, that Dan Duff subsided into a state of real
stupor, so profound and prolonged that even Jan began to doubt whether
he would awake from it.

CHAPTER L.

MR. AND MRS. VERNER.

Lionel Verner sat over his morning letters, bending upon one of them a
perplexed brow. A claim which he had settled the previous spring--at
least, which he believed had been settled--was now forwarded to him
again. That there was very little limit to his wife's extravagance, he
had begun to know.

In spite of Sibylla's extensive purchases made in Paris at the time of
their marriage, she had contrived by the end of the following winter to
run up a tolerable bill at her London milliner's. When they had gone to
town in the early spring, this bill was presented to Lionel. Four
hundred and odd pounds. He gave Sibylla a cheque for its amount, and
some gentle, loving words of admonition at the same time--not to spend
him out of house and home.

A second account from the same milliner had arrived this morning--been
delivered to him with other London letters. Why it should have been sent
to him, and not to his wife, he was unable to tell--unless it was meant
as a genteel hint that payment would be acceptable. The whole amount was
for eleven hundred pounds, but part of this purported to be "To bill
delivered"--four hundred and odd pounds--the precise sum which Lionel
believed to have been paid. Eleven hundred pounds! and all the other
claims upon him! No wonder he sat with a bent brow. If things went on at
this rate, Verner's Pride would come to the ha