"No, that is true too," replied Monica. "The tower is still called 'Sir Mervyn's Tower', and it is said there is the stain of his blood on the great bell, and that nothing can ever take it off."
"Have you seen it?"
"Yes, once. It's only a patch of rust."
"Was Sir Mervyn buried in the church too?"
"There's no monument to him, and no record in the old church documents of his grave. I should think it was much more likely that his followers were allowed to carry him to his own estate near Appleford, and bury him in the church there. The story runs that his ghost haunts Haversleigh Tower and walks up the belfry stairs, but of course that's nothing but superstition and nonsense."
"Don't you believe in ghosts?" asked Cicely, who was sometimes a little afraid of the dark passages at the Manor.
"No: when people are dead, I think if they were good they are either resting until the resurrection, or have something so much better and nobler to do in another world that they could not revisit this, any more than a butterfly could turn again into a chrysalis; and if they were bad, I am sure they would not be allowed to come back simply to terrify the living."
"Quite right," agreed Mildred. "In most of the stories one reads about ghosts, they never return for any useful purpose, only to make silly people run and scream."
"There was one thing that didn't seem perfectly clear in the story," said Lindsay. "Was it really Roger who came to the Manor disguised as an old pedlar?"
"Evidently it was. He couldn't trust anyone else to give the letter to Catharine, and he wanted to see for himself how Sir Mervyn was prepared to defend the Manor. There is still part of a ruin left of the old Franciscan Convent near Covebury, where Catharine took sanctuary. It's not much though—only a few pillars and a tumble-down wall."