"You don't believe——?"

"No, I don't. Him and his master was
to sleep at Danecester last night, and go
off by an early train this morning. It ain't
likely as Paul should be at the Crown
at Shipley Magna all alone. You must
have took somebody else for him. Paul
would have spoke to you, if it had been
him. Why shouldn't he?"

Joe turned on her with crushing severity.

"P'raps you'll say I was drunk next,
Jo-anna!"

"O Lord no, I shan't say so. Maybe
you were dreaming. But never mind now.
Go to bed; there's a good man."

It proved very difficult indeed to induce
Joe to go to bed, however. He protested
over and over again that he felt pretty
comfortable. Then he required Joanna and
Catherine to declare solemnly that they
believed his statement about having seen Paul:
which, finding it hopeless to get him to go to
bed on any other terms, they unscrupulously
did. Then he very unexpectedly declared
that he and Paul had lived together like
brothers; that there was no one for whom
he felt a warmer regard; and that Paul's
cold and unkind behaviour had cut him to
the heart. At last, by dint of scolding and
coaxing, he was got to his own room; the
door of which Joanna shut, with a fervent
prayer that they might not all be burnt in
their beds, and with a gleam of comfort in
the knowledge that the end of candle
entrusted to Joe could not last above five
minutes.

"Ain't it queer, Joe taking that notion
about seeing Paul?" said Catherine, when
she and Joanna were alone together. " Do
you think it could ha' been—- could ha' been
what's that you call it when a person's
ghost walks before they're dead, as a kind
of a warning. Like that story you tell
of the eldest son where you lived kitchen-
maid long ago? Oh, I know—a fetch.
That's the name. Do you think it could
ha' been Paul's fetch?"

"Pooh, child! Servants don't have no
fetches. Them kind of things only belongs
to great families. Don't you go scaring
your wits with such fancies, or I shall
never tell you no more of my stories."

"But," persisted the girl, " Joe said that
the figure passed through the room very
quick and silent, and with its head turned
away, and——-"

"Well, if its head was turned away, how
was Joe to know who it was? It's just a
drunken man's fancy, I tell you. Go to
your bed. It's nigh upon eleven, and I
have seen to the fastenings of the doors.
Good-night. When Joe's sober to-morrow,
he will tell another story, I warrant."

But the next morning Joe told no other
story. On the contrary, he persisted in
his former assertion, and confirmed it by
proof, which it was impossible to doubt.
He had remarked Paul's presence at the
Crown to his friend the head ostler, and
the ostler had said, yes; he knew him well
enough. He was the foreign servant of
that rich barrowknight, as owned such
neat nags, and had put up at the Crown
for his hunting quarters. But in reply to
a question as to what Paul had come there
for, the ostler professed ignorance. It might
be to fetch some traps of his master's. The
ostler believed that there had been a
porkmanty or something of that kind left in
the landlord's care. Paul had brought a
fly from the hotel at Danecester, and was
to go back in it. So he (the ostler) sup-
posed that he had to carry luggage.

"But why Paul shouldn't speak to me I
don't know, nor I don't much care," said
Joe Dowsett, whose feelings towards his
dear friend had come down to their ordinary
level of stolid indifference, since the in-
fluence of his potations had subsided.

"I couldn't have believed as Paul would
have give hisself such airs," exclaimed
Catherine, with a toss of her head. She
felt that Paul's slight of Joe Dowsett was
a reflection on the rest of the vicar's
household.

About eleven o'clock in the forenoon.
Maud arrived from Lowater. Captain
Sheardown had driven her to Shipley, and
had set her down at the vicarage without
alighting himself, purposing to proceed to
Haymoor.

"Where is Veronica?" was Maud's first
question to her guardian.

"Veronica has displeased me very much,"
answered the vicar. " She went to drink
tea with old Mrs. Plew, and chose to remain
there all night, although she knows—- or
might know if she had any sort of filial
desire to ascertain my sentiments on any
subject whatever—that I object to her
putting herself under any obligation of that
kind to the Plews."

Maud looked grave, but said sweetly,
"Please don't be very angry with her,
Uncle Charles. It was a dreadfully stormy
night. Perhaps she was afraid of the walk
home."

"She was assuredly not afraid of
incurring my displeasure, whatever else she
may have feared," said the vicar.