Honor shivers.
"Let us get into the house," she says. "I feel as if I could not breathe out here; and don't let us talk any more about it, please!"
But Launce cannot hold his tongue; he does nothing but scoff at their credulity, and when they reach the house the first thing he does is to go straight to the dining-room and tell the whole story to his father.
The old man looks grave as he listens; it even seems to Honor if a little of the ruddy color dies out of his face.
"Best let these things alone, my boy," he says at last.
In his own young days such things as warnings were neither scoffed at nor disbelieved in.
"Let us keep our powder and shot for men of bone and muscle like ourselves, Launce, and not waste them on shadows."
If he had said, "Let us ask the old abbot up to supper, and treat him to a jorum of whiskey-punch," Launce could not have looked more surprised.
"Well," he says in a tone if disgust, "I did think you had more sense, father, than to believe in a fellow walking about some hundred and fifty years after his own funeral."
The old man smiles, but he says no more; and Honor feels that the appearance of this phantom has cast a gloom over the house that was scarcely needed.