"

"Mistress _Joyce_, had you found you, as I did, close to a blasted tree,
and been met of a white woman with no head, I'll lay you aught you will
you'd never have run no faster," saith _Austin_ in an injured tone.

"That should I _not_," quoth Aunt _Joyce_ boldly. "I shall win my
fortune at that game, _Austin_, if thou deny not thy debts of honour.
Why, man o' life, what harm should a blasted tree do me? Had the
lightning struck it that minute while I stood there, then might there
have been some danger: but because the lightning struck it two years
gone, how should it hurt me now? And as to a woman with no head, that
would I tarry to believe till I had stripped off her white sheet and
seen for myself."

"Eh, Mistress _Joyce_," cries old Mistress _Rigg_, "but sure you should
never dare to touch a ghost?"

"There be not many things, save sin, Mistress _Rigg_, that I should not
dare to do an' it liked me. I have run after a thief with a poker: ay,
and I have handled a Popish catchpoll, in Queen _Mary's_ days, that he
never came near my house no more. And wherefore, I pray you tell me,
should I be more feared of a spirit without a body than of a spirit
within the body?--_Austin_, if thou meet the ghost again, prithee bid
her come up to _Selwick_ Hall and ask for _Joyce Morrell_, for I would
give forty shillings to have a good talk with her. Only think, how much
a ghost could tell a body!"

"Lack-a-day, Mistress _Joyce_, I'll neither make nor meddle with her!"
cries _Austin_.

"Poor weak soul!" saith Aunt _Joyce_. Whereat many laughed.

So, after a while, sat we down to rear-supper; and at after that,
gathered in small groups, twos and threes and the like, and talked: and
I with _Isabel Meade_, and _Temperance Murthwaite_, and _Austin Park_,
had some rare merriment touching divers matters. When all at once I
heard Aunt _Joyce_ say--

"Well, but what ill were there in asking questions of spirits, if they
might visit the earth?"

"The ill for which _Adam_ was turned forth of _Eden_," saith _Father_:
"disobedience to a plain command of God. Look in the xviii chapter of
_Deuteronomy_, and you shall see necromancy forbidden by name. That is,
communication with such as be dead."

"But that were for religion, Sir _Aubrey_," saith Master _Coward_.
"This, look you, were but matter of curiousness."

"That is to say, it was _Eva's_ sin rather than _Adam's_," _Father_
makes answer. "Surely, that which is forbi