ard them say that they do believe it," responded Tynn,
with a knowing nod. "Folks may go about and say that I believe it,
perhaps; but that wouldn't make it any nearer the fact. And what has
all this to do with Mr. Verner?"

"I am coming to it," said Roy. He took a step backward, looked carefully
up and down the road, lest listeners might be in ambush; stretched his
neck forward, and in like manner surveyed the field On either side the
hedge. Apparently it satisfied him, and he resumed his close proximity
to Tynn and his meaning whisper. "Can't you guess the riddle, Mr. Tynn?"

"I can't in the least guess what you mean, or what you are driving at,"
was Tynn's response. "I think you must have been having a drop of drink,
Roy. I ask what this is to my master, Mr. Verner?"

"Drink be bothered! I've not had a sup inside my mouth since midday,"
was Roy's retort. "This secret has been enough drink for me, and meat,
too. You'll keep counsel, if I tell it you, Mr. Tynn? Not but what it
must soon come out."

"Well?" returned Tynn, in some surprise.

"It's Fred Massingbird fast enough. But it's not his ghost."

"What on earth do you mean?" asked Tynn, never for a moment glancing at
the fact of what Roy tried to imply.

"_He_ is come back: Frederick Massingbird. He didn't die, over there."

A pause, devoted by Tynn to staring and thinking. When the full sense of
the words broke upon him, he staggered a step or two away from the
ex-bailiff.

"Heaven help us, if it's true!" he uttered. "Roy! it _can't_ be!"

"It _is_," said Roy.

They stood looking at each other by starlight. Tynn's face had grown hot
and wet, and he wiped it. "It can't be," he mechanically repeated.

"I tell you it _is_, Mr. Tynn. Now never you mind asking me how I came
to the bottom of it," went on Roy in a sort of defiant tone. "I did come
to the bottom of it, and I do know it; and Mr. Fred, he knows that I
know it. It's as sure that he is back, and in the neighbourhood, as that
you and me is here at this gate. He is alive and he is among us--as
certain as that you are Mr. Tynn, and I be Giles Roy."

There came flashing over Tynn's thoughts the scene of that very evening.
His mistress's shrieks and agitation when she broke from Miss West; the
cries and sobs which had penetrated to their ears when she was shut
afterwards in the study with her husband. The unusual scene had been
productive of gossiping comment among the servants and Tynn had believed