I can remember: once when I was a little boy, by
old Dan Holt, the postmaster, and once about ten years ago."

Dempsey looked at the speaker indulgently. To his sharpened transatlantic
sense, these old men, in this funny old village, seemed to him a
curiously dim and feeble folk. He could hardly prevent himself from
talking to them as though they were children. He supposed his grandfather
would have been like that if he'd stayed on at Ipscombe. He thanked
the stars he hadn't!

But since he had been summoned to consult, as a person who had a vested
interest, of a rather blood-curdling sort, in the Great End ghost, he had
to give his opinion; and he gave it, while Halsey listened and smoked in
a rather sulky silence. For it was soon evident that the murderer's
grandson had no use at all for the supposed ghost-story. He tore it
ruthlessly to pieces. In the first place, Halsey described the man seen
on the grass-road as tall and lanky. But according to his grandfather's
account, the murdered gamekeeper, on the contrary, was a broadly-built,
stumpy man. In the next place--the coughing and the bleeding!--he laughed
so long and loudly at these points in the story that Halsey's still black
bushy eyebrows met frowningly over a pair of angry eyes, and Betts tried
hurriedly to tame the young man's mirth.

"Well, if yer don't think that man as Halsey saw _was_ the ghost, what do
you s'pose 'ee was doin' there?" asked Betts, "and where did he go?
Halsey went right round the farm. The hill just there is as bare as my
hand. He must ha' seen the man--if it _wor_ a man--an' he saw nothin'.
There isn't a tree or a bush where that man could ha' hid hisself--if
he _wor_ a man."

Dempsey declared he should have to go and examine the ground himself
before he could answer the question. But of course there was an answer
to it--there must be. As to the man--why Millsborough, and Ipscombe too,
had been full of outlandish East Enders, flying from the raids, Poles
and Russians, and such like--thievin' fellows by all accounts. Why
couldn't it be one of them--prowling round the farm for anything he could
pick up--and frightened off, when he saw Halsey?

Betts, smoking with prodigious energy, inquired what he made of the
_blood_. Didn't he know the old story of how Watson was tracked down to
the cart-shed? Dempsey laughed again.

"Well, it's curious, grant ye. It's real funny! But where are you going
to get blood without a body? And if a thing'