fork in a highly
creditable manner, and to display a capacity both of eating and
drinking, such as banished all fear of his having sustained any lasting
injury from his fright.

Supper done, they crowded round the fire again, and, as is common on
such occasions, propounded all manner of leading questions calculated
to surround the story with new horrors and surprises. But Solomon Daisy,
notwithstanding these temptations, adhered so steadily to his original
account, and repeated it so often, with such slight variations, and with
such solemn asseverations of its truth and reality, that his hearers
were (with good reason) more astonished than at first. As he took John
Willet's view of the matter in regard to the propriety of not bruiting
the tale abroad, unless the spirit should appear to him again, in which
case it would be necessary to take immediate counsel with the clergyman,
it was solemnly resolved that it should be hushed up and kept quiet.
And as most men like to have a secret to tell which may exalt their own
importance, they arrived at this conclusion with perfect unanimity.

As it was by this time growing late, and was long past their usual hour
of separating, the cronies parted for the night. Solomon Daisy, with a
fresh candle in his lantern, repaired homewards under the escort of long
Phil Parkes and Mr Cobb, who were rather more nervous than himself. Mr
Willet, after seeing them to the door, returned to collect his thoughts
with the assistance of the boiler, and to listen to the storm of wind
and rain, which had not yet abated one jot of its fury.

Chapter 34

Before old John had looked at the boiler quite twenty minutes, he got
his ideas into a focus, and brought them to bear upon Solomon Daisy's
story. The more he thought of it, the more impressed he became with
a sense of his own wisdom, and a desire that Mr Haredale should be
impressed with it likewise. At length, to the end that he might sustain
a principal and important character in the affair; and might have the
start of Solomon and his two friends, through whose means he knew the
adventure, with a variety of exaggerations, would be known to at least
a score of people, and most likely to Mr Haredale himself, by
breakfast-time to-morrow; he determined to repair to the Warren before
going to bed.

'He's my landlord,' thought John, as he took a candle in his hand, and
setting it down in a corner out of the wind's way, opened a casement in
the