did see was--hist!"

The Sergeant halted suddenly, crouching in the shadow of a hedge; they
were close on the orchard now and, upon the stilly air was a soft
rustle, a faint scraping sound and, parting the leafy screen, the Major
saw a dark figure silhouetted above the wall, a nebulous shape that
seemed to hang suspended a moment ere it vanished over the wall into my
lady's garden.

"That weren't no apparation, sir!" whispered the Sergeant, looking to
pan and priming, and, hurrying forward, pointed to a footprint in the
soft, newly-turned soil. "Never heard as spectres wore shoes, sir."
The Major, staring at that slender footprint, felt suddenly cold and
sick, and wondered; then, as the Sergeant prepared to climb the wall,
checked him:

"Wait--wait you here!" he muttered. "Make way!" Reaching up, the
Major swung himself astride the coping and silently mounted the wall.
Before him was a flagged walk which, as he remembered, led to the
arbour; this walk he avoided and, stepping in among the bushes, began
to advance cautiously, eyes and ears on the strain, for the shadows lay
dense hereabouts. Thus he was close upon the arbour when he stopped
suddenly, arrested by the sound of a man's voice, low and muffled.

"... 'tis you now, Bet, and only you----"

"... Ah God, how may I? And yet ... my own dear, have I ever refused
thee ... I've yearned for thee so..." Here the sound of passionate
kisses.

It was her voice indeed, but so tender, so full of thrilling
gentleness! The Major shivered and a sudden faintness and nausea
seizing him, leaned weakly against a tree, and ever, as he leaned thus,
their voices reached him--his low and eager, hers a-thrill with
tenderness.

The Major turned and, groping like one blind, crept back until he came
to the wall and crouching there, his head between his arms, seemed to
shake and writhe as with some horrible convulsion.

"That you, sir?" a voice whispered hoarsely. Silently the Major drew
himself up and dropped back into his own grounds.

"What was it, sir?"

"Nought, Zeb."

"D'ye mean 'twere a ghost, arter all?"

"Aye!"

"Didn't notice if 'twere a her or a him, sir?"

"No!"

"Why then, did you chance to ob-serve----" but seeing the Major's face,
Sergeant Zebedee broke off with a gasp and, dropping his blunderbuss,
reached out quick hands: "Good God! Your honour! What's amiss?"

"Let be, Zeb, let be," said the Major wearily, putting by these kindly
hands, "'t