This gave Lawrence an opportunity to inquire concerning Faith Bamsey's famous gift.
"Is it true, as they tell, that you be a ghost-seer, ma'am?" he asked.
"I am," she replied placidly. "It runs in my family and I take no credit for it."
"Never afeared?"
"Never. They come and they go. 'Tis just something in my nature that lets my eyes see more than other people. There's animals have the gift also, so it's naught to brag about. I'll see the spectrums any time—just the ghostes of dead folk, that flicker about where they used to live sometimes; and if I be that way by chance when they be there, then I see 'em."
"And do they see you, ma'am?"
"I can't say as to that. I've never had no speech with them and they don't take no notice of me. Sometimes I recognise the creatures as people that lived in my time and memory; sometimes I do not. Only last week I see old Noah Parsons hanging over New Bridge, just as he did in life times without count, looking down over to see if there was any fish moving. An old poacher he was—till he got too feeble to do anything but right."
"And mother seed Lazarus Coomstock in Holne Wood not a month after he was teeled*—didn't you, mother?" asked Jane.
* Teeled—buried.
"I did," answered Mrs. Bamsey. "I saw him outside his own house on the day of the sale, with live neighbours at his elbows—for all the world as though he'd come with the rest to bid for the things."