d Lady Atherley, "but Lucinda has never
written to say what train she is coming by."

"A good thing, too," said Atherley; "we shall not have to send for her.
Those unlucky horses are worked off their legs already. Is that the
carriage coming back from Rood Warren? Harold, run and stop it, and tell
Marsh to drive round to the door before he goes to the stables. I may as
well have a lift down to the other end of the village."

"What do you want to do at the other end of the village?"

"I don't want to do anything, but my unlucky fate as a landowner compels
me to go over and look at an eel-weir which has just burst. Lindy, come
along with me, and cheer me up with one of your ghost stories. You are
as good as a Christmas annual."

"And on your way back," said Lady Atherley, "would you mind the carriage
stopping to leave some brandy at Monk's? Mr. Austyn told me last night
he was so weak, and the doctor has ordered him brandy every hour."

Atherley was disappointed with what he called my last edition of the
ghost; he complained that it was little more definite than the Canon's.

"Your last two stories are too highflown for my simple tastes. I want a
good coherent description of the ghost himself, not the particular
emotions he excited. I had expected better things from Austyn. Upon my
word, as far as we have gone, old Aunt Eleanour's is the best. I think
Austyn, with his mediaeval turn of mind and his quite mediaeval habit of
living upon air, might have managed to raise something with horns and
hoofs. It is a curious thing that in the dark ages the devil was always
appearing to somebody. He doesn't make himself so cheap now. He has
evidently more to do; but there is a fashion in ghosts as in other
things, and that reminds me our ghost, from all we hear of it, is
decidedly rococo. If you study the reports of societies that hunt the
supernatural, you will find that the latest thing in ghosts is very
quiet and commonplace. Rattling chains and blue lights, and even fancy
dress, have quite gone out. And the people who see the ghosts are not
even startled at first sight; they think it is a visitor, or a man come
to wind the clocks. In fact, the chic thing for a ghost in these days is
to be mistaken for a living person."

"What puzzles me is that a sceptic like you can so easily swallow the
astonishing coincidence of these different people all having imagined
the ghost in the same house."

"Why, the coincidence is not a bit