semaid, now came in to fetch
away the children.

"Isn't this provoking," exclaimed John Mortimer, when they were gone. "I
had no notion that child had been neglected and left to pick up these
pernicious superstitions, though I never liked his mother from the first
moment I set my eyes on her."

"Why did you ask her to stay at your house then?" said Brandon,
laughing.

"Giles, you know as well as I do."

Thereupon, having finished their breakfast, they set forth to walk to
the town, arguing together on some subject that interested them till
they reached the bank.

Behind it, in a comfortable room fitted up with library tables, leather
chairs, and cases for books and papers, sat old Augustus Mortimer.
"Grand," as he was always called by his descendants, that being easier
to say than his full title of grandfather; and if John Mortimer had not
taken Brandon into this room to see him, the talk about the ghost might
have faded away altogether from the mind of the latter.

As it was, Grand asked after the little ones, and Brandon, standing on
the rug and looking down on the fine stern features and white head,
began to give him a graphic account of what little Peter Melcombe had
been teaching them, John Mortimer, while he unlocked his desk and sorted
out certain papers, now and then adding a touch or two in mimicry of his
children's little voices.

Old Augustus said nothing, but Brandon, to his great surprise, noticed
that as the narrative went on it produced a marked effect upon him; he
listened with suppressed eagerness, and then with a cogitative air as if
he was turning the thing over in his mind.

The conclusion of the story, how Janie had said the name of the ghost
was Melcombe, John Mortimer related, for Brandon by that time was keenly
alive to the certainty that they were disturbing the old man much.

A short silence followed. John was still arranging his papers, then his
father said deliberately,--

"This is the first hint I ever received of any presence being supposed
to haunt the place."

The ghost itself had never produced the slightest effect on John
Mortimer. All he thought of was the consequence of the tale on the minds
of his children.

"I shall take care that little monkey does not come here again in a
hurry," he remarked, at the same time proceeding to mend a quill pen;
his father watching him rather keenly, Brandon thought, from under his
bushy, white eyebrows.

"Now, of all men," thought Br