in a
tone of much candour and tolerance. "There's folks, i' my opinion,
they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a pike-staff
before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my wife, now,
can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under her nose. I
never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself, "Very like I
haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a ghost for a smell,
or else contrairiways. And so, I'm for holding with both sides; for,
as I say, the truth lies between 'em. And if Dowlas was to go and
stand, and say he'd never seen a wink o' Cliff's Holiday all the night
through, I'd back him; and if anybody said as Cliff's Holiday was
certain sure, for all that, I'd back _him_ too. For the smell's what I
go by."

The landlord's analogical argument was not well received by the
farrier--a man intensely opposed to compromise.

"Tut, tut," he said, setting down his glass with refreshed irritation;
"what's the smell got to do with it? Did ever a ghost give a man a
black eye? That's what I should like to know. If ghos'es want me to
believe in 'em, let 'em leave off skulking i' the dark and i' lone
places--let 'em come where there's company and candles."

"As if ghos'es 'ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!" said
Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence to
apprehend the conditions of ghostly phenomena.

CHAPTER VII

Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had a
more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey attributed to them; for
the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing in the
warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his
strange unearthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement,
like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not
excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw,
not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition; for the door by which
Silas had entered was hidden by the high-screened seats, and no one had
noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost,
might be supposed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would
tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always
said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul
went loose from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on
the whole, he would have been as well contented witho