“’Tis his reverence’s self!” cried Mrs. Pearn.
“No less, my good woman, no less. A glass of your best brandy, please. I—I—”
“You’m gallied—you’m likewise skeered. I see it in your worshipful manner of shaking below the knee. I wish to God you had let me go along with ’e. But, my stars! you must have comed down Red Hill properly quick, if so be you went to the top of un.”
“I did descend quickly, John Cramphorn. I have no hesitation in declaring that never have I come down that hill so fast before. The Lord looked to it that I dashed not my foot against a stone. And, furthermore, this apparition is no mere conceit of ignorance or bucolic fancy; I myself, my friends, have seen it; and I heartily wish that I had not done so.”
“Pass the glass to his reverence, Jenifer, will ’e; an’ get you out of the armchair, Toby, an’ let minister come by the fire. I’ve put in hot water an’ sugar an’ the brandy be—”
She stopped. All men knew the brandy of the “Golden Anchor,” but it was not considered good manners to criticise it.
Mr. Yates drank, then colour returned to his little grey face and he passed his glass for a second dose.
“I could discourse upon this theme at very considerable length,” he said; “but the matter calls for deeds rather than words, or perhaps I should say both.”
“No doubt, as a man of God, your duty do lie clear afore you, if I may say so respectful,” ventured Robert Bluett; and the pastor admitted that it was so.
“By the help of Heaven these unhappy beings, that here dwell midway between earth and heaven, must be laid to rest,” he said. “Thaumaturgy, or working of miracles, can only still subsist at the desire of Jehovah, and if He wills that I liberate these funereal spirits to their rest, I can do it, not otherwise.”