“Now then—quick! I hear the old bumble-bee down alow yonder. Keep as still as mice, and stir not, nor laugh for your lives!”
Kate appeared to have quite forgotten her trouble, and entered into Agatha’s mischievous fun with all the thoughtless glee of a child.
“Agatha,” said Amphillis, “my Lady Foljambe should be heavy angered if she wist thy dealing. Prithee, work not thus. If Father Jordan verily believed thou wert a ghost, it were well-nigh enough to kill him, poor sely old man. And he hath ill deserved such treatment at thine hands.”
In the present day we should never expect an adult clergyman to fall into so patent a trap; but in the Middle Ages even learned men were credulous to an extent which we can scarcely imagine. Priests were in the habit of receiving friendly visits from pretended saints, and meeting apparitions of so-called demons, apparently without the faintest suspicion that the spirits in question might have bodies attached to them, or that their imaginations might be at all responsible for the vision.
“Thank all the Calendar she’s away!” was Agatha’s response. “Thee hold thy peace, and be not a spoil-sport. I mean to tell him I’m a soul in Purgatory, and none save a priest named Jordan can deliver me, and he only by licking of three crosses in the dust afore our Lady’s altar every morrow for a month. That shall hurt none of him! and it shall cause me die o’ laughter to see him do it. Back! quick! here cometh he. I would fain hear the old snail skrike out at me, ‘Avaunt, Sathanas!’ as he surely will.”
Amphillis stepped back. Her quicker ear had recognised that the step beginning to ascend the stairs was not that of the old priest, and she felt pretty sure whose it was—that healthy, sturdy, plain-spoken Meg, the cook-maid, was the destined victim, and was likely to be little injured, while there was a good chance of Agatha’s receiving her deserts.
Just as Meg reached the landing, a low groan issued from the uncanny thing. Agatha of course could not see; she only heard the steps, which she still mistook for those of Father Jordan. Meg stood calmly gazing on the apparition.
“Will none deliver an unhappy soul in Purgatory?” demanded a hollow moaning voice, followed by awful groans, such as Amphillis had not supposed it possible for Agatha to produce.
“I rather reckon, my Saracen, thou’rt a soul out o’ Purgatory with a body tacked to thee,” said Meg, in the coolest manner. “Help thee? Oh ay, that I will, and bring thee back to middle earth out o’ thy pains. Come then!”
And Meg laid hands on the white sheet, and calmly began to pull it down.