ss 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."

"The face of your fancy," slightingly returned Jan.

"I swear it was, then! There! There's no mistaking _him_. The hedgehog
on his cheek looked larger and blacker than ever."

Master Cheese did not fail to talk of this abroad; the surgery boy, Bob,
who had listened with open ears, did not fail to talk of it, and it
spread throughout Deerham; additional testimony to that already
accumulated. In a few days' time, the commotion was at its height;
nearly the only persons who remained in ignorance of the reported facts
being the master and mistress of Verner's Pride, and those connected
with them, relatives on either side.

That some great internal storm of superstition was shaking Deerham,
Lionel knew. In his happy ignorance, he attributed it to the rumour
which had first been circulated, touching Rachel's ghost. He was an
ear-witness to an angry colloquy at home. Some indispensable trifle for
his wife's toilette was required suddenly from Deerham one evening, and
Mademoiselle Benoite ordered that it should be sent for. But not one of
the maids would go. The Frenchwoman insisted, and there ensued a stormy
war. The girls, one and all, declared they'd rather give up their
service, than go abroad after nightfall.

When the fears and the superstitions came palpably in Lionel's way, he
made fun of them--as Jan might have done. Once or twice he felt half
provoked; and asked the people, in a tone between earnest and jest,
whether they were not ashamed of themselves. Little reply made they; not
one of them but seemed to shrink from mentioning to Lionel Verner the
name that the ghost had borne in life.

On nearly the last evening that it would be light during this moon, Mr.
Bourne started from home to pay a visit to Mrs. Hook, the labourer's
wife. The woman had been ailing for some time; partly from natural
illness, partly from chagrin--for her daughter Alice was the talk of the
village--and she had now become seriously ill. On this day Mr. Bourne
had accidentally met Jan; and, in conversing upon parish matters, he had
inquired after Mrs. Hook.

"Very much worse," was Jan's answer. "Unless a change takes place,
she'll not last