less scamp, Bill Martin. I was but a
slip of a lad then. I walked all the way from ---- to Ipswich, to see
him hung. How came you to think of him?"

"It was him, or some demon in his shape," said Noah Cotton--for it was
the hero of my tale--now able to rise and take the chair that the
gossiping little tailor offered him. "If ever I saw Mr. Carlos in life,
I saw his apparition on the bridge this night."

"A man should know his own father," mused the tailor, "and yet here is
Bob Mason takes the same appearance for the ghostly resemblance of his
own _respectable_ progenitor. There is some strange trickery in all
this. What the dickens should bring the ghost of Squire Carlos so far
from his own parish? He wor shot in his own preserves by Bill Martin. I
mind the circumstance quite well. A good man wor the old Squire, but
over particular about his game. If I mistake not, you be Measter Noah
Cotton, whose mother lived up at the porter's lodge?"

Noah nodded assent, but he didn't seem to relish these questions and
reminiscences of the honest labourer, while Josh, delighted to hear his
tongue run, continued--

"I kind o' 'spect you've forgotten me, Mister Cotton. I used to work in
them days at Farmer Humphrey's, up Wood-lane. You have grow'd an
old-looking man since I seed you last. You were young and spry enough
then. I didna b'leeve the tales that volk did tell of 'un--that you were
the Squire's own son. But you be as loike him now as two peas. The
neebors wor right arter all."

The stranger winced, and turned pale.

"They say as how you've grow'd a rich man yoursel' since that time. Is
the old 'uman, your mother, livin' still?"

"She is dead," said Noah, turning his back abruptly on the interrogator,
and addressing himself to the mistress of the house. "Mrs. Mason, I have
been very ill. I feel better, but the fit has left me weak and
exhausted. Can you give me a bed and a room to myself, where I could
sleep the effects of it quietly off?"

"My beds are engaged," was the curt reply of the surly dame. "Pray how
long have you been subject to those fits?"

"For several years. Ever since I had the typhus fever. And now the least
mental anxiety brings them on."

"So it appears. Particularly the sight of an old friend when least
expected. This is strange," and she smiled significantly; "for he was,
both living and dead, a kind friend to you."

"He was indeed," sighed the stranger. "It was not until after I lost
him, th