was true; for, when I did get to bed, it was hours afore I could
close 'em."

"But, Matthew, I tell you that it is impossible. You must have been
mistaken."

"Sir, until last night, had anybody told me such a thing, I should have
said it was impossible. You know, sir, I have never been given to such
fancies. There's no doubt, sir; there's _no doubt_ that it was the
spirit of Mr. Frederick Massingbird."

Matthew's clear, intelligent eye was fixed firmly on Mr. Bourne's--his
face, as usual, bending a little forward. Mr. Bourne had never believed
in "spirits"; clergymen, as a rule, do not. A half smile crossed his
lips.

"Were you frightened?" he asked.

"I was not frightened, sir, in the sense that you, perhaps, put the
question. I was surprised, startled. As I might have been surprised and
startled at seeing anybody I least expected to see--somebody that I had
thought was miles away. Since poor Rachel's death, sir, I have lived, so
to say, in communion with spirits. What with Robin's talking of his hope
to see _hers_, and my constantly thinking of her; knowing also that it
can't be long, in the course of nature, before I am one myself, I have
grown to be, as it were, familiar with the dead in my mind. Thus, sir,
in that sense, no fear came upon me last night. I don't think, sir, I
should feel fear at meeting or being alone with a spirit, any more than
I should at meeting a man. But I was startled and disturbed."

"Matthew," cried Mr. Bourne, in some perplexity, "I had always believed
you superior to these foolish things. Ghosts might do well enough for
the old days, but the world has grown older and wiser. At any rate, the
greater portion of it has."

"If you mean, sir, that I was superior to the belief in ghosts, you are
right. I never had a grain of faith in such superstition in my life; and
I have tried all means to convince my son what folly it was of him to
hover round about the Willow Pond, with any thought that Rachel might
'come again.' No, sir, I have never been given to it."

"And yet you deliberately assure me, Matthew, that you saw a ghost last
night!"

"Sir, that it was Mr. Frederick Massingbird, dead or alive, that I saw,
I must hold to. We know that he is dead, sir, his wife buried him in
that far land; so what am I to believe? The face looked ghastly white,
not like a person's living."

Mr. Bourne mused. That Frederick Massingbird was dead and buried, there
could not be the slightest doubt. H