ere in search.

"We may as well return to the house, Mr. Hartright," said Miss
Halcombe; "the information we want is evidently not to be found."

She had bowed to Mr. Dempster, and was about to leave the schoolroom,
when the forlorn position of Jacob Postlethwaite, piteously sniffing on
the stool of penitence, attracted her attention as she passed him, and
made her stop good-humouredly to speak a word to the little prisoner
before she opened the door.

"You foolish boy," she said, "why don't you beg Mr. Dempster's pardon,
and hold your tongue about the ghost?"

"Eh!--but I saw t' ghaist," persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a stare
of terror and a burst of tears.

"Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed! What
ghost----"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe," interposed the schoolmaster a
little uneasily--"but I think you had better not question the boy. The
obstinate folly of his story is beyond all belief; and you might lead
him into ignorantly----"

"Ignorantly what?" inquired Miss Halcombe sharply.

"Ignorantly shocking your feelings," said Mr. Dempster, looking very
much discomposed.

"Upon my word, Mr. Dempster, you pay my feelings a great compliment in
thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an urchin as that!" She
turned with an air of satirical defiance to little Jacob, and began to
question him directly. "Come!" she said, "I mean to know all about
this. You naughty boy, when did you see the ghost?"

"Yestere'en, at the gloaming," replied Jacob.

"Oh! you saw it yesterday evening, in the twilight? And what was it
like?"

"Arl in white--as a ghaist should be," answered the ghost-seer, with a
confidence beyond his years.

"And where was it?"

"Away yander, in t' kirkyard--where a ghaist ought to be."

"As a 'ghaist' should be--where a 'ghaist' ought to be--why, you little
fool, you talk as if the manners and customs of ghosts had been
familiar to you from your infancy! You have got your story at your
fingers' ends, at any rate. I suppose I shall hear next that you can
actually tell me whose ghost it was?"

"Eh! but I just can," replied Jacob, nodding his head with an air of
gloomy triumph.

Mr. Dempster had already tried several times to speak while Miss
Halcombe was examining his pupil, and he now interposed resolutely
enough to make himself heard.

"Excuse me, Miss Halcombe," he said, "if I venture to say that you are
only encouraging the boy by asking hi