it during my absence
yesterday. I could have wished it kept from her, until we were at some
certainty."

"Oh, come, Mr. Verner, take heart!" impulsively cried Captain Cannonby,
all the improbabilities of the case striking forcibly upon him. "The
thing is not possible; it is not indeed."

"At any rate, your testimony will be so much comfort for my wife,"
returned Lionel gladly. "It has comforted me. If my fears are not
entirely dispelled, there's something done towards it."

Arrived at the Belvedere Road, Lionel looked about for his carriage. He
could not see it. At that moment Jan turned out of the surgery. Lionel
asked him if he had seen Sibylla.

"She is gone home," replied Jan. "She and Miss Deb split upon some rock,
and Sibylla got into her carriage, and went off in anger."

He was walking away with his usual rapid strides, on his way to some
patient, when Lionel caught hold of him. "Jan, this is Captain Cannonby.
The friend who was with Frederick Massingbird when he died. He assures
me that he is dead. Dead and buried. My brother, Captain Cannonby."

"There cannot be a doubt of it," said Captain Cannonby, alluding to the
death. "I saw him die; I helped to bury him."

"Then who _is_ it that walks about, dressed up as his ghost?" debated
Jan.

"I cannot tell," said Lionel, a severe expression arising to his lips.
"I begin to think with Captain Cannonby; that there can be no doubt that
Frederick Massingbird is dead; therefore, he, it is not. But that it
would be undesirable, for my wife's sake, to make this doubt public, I
would have every house in the place searched. Whoever it may be, he is
concealed in one of them."

"Little doubt of that," nodded Jan. "I'll pounce upon him, if I get the
chance."

Lionel and Captain Cannonby continued their way to Verner's Pride. The
revived hope in Lionel's mind strengthened with every step they took. It
did seem impossible, looking at it from a practical, matter-of-fact
point of view, that a man buried deep in the earth, and supposed to be
dead before he was placed there, could come to life again.

"What a relief for Sibylla!" he involuntarily cried, drawing a long,
relieved breath on his own score. "This must be just one of those cases,
Captain Cannonby, when good Catholics, in the old days, made a vow to
the Virgin of so many valuable offerings, should the dread be removed
and turn out to have been no legitimate dread at all."

"Ay. I should like to be in at the