"Horses sound. Dogs hearty,
Earth's stopped, and Foxes plenty."
The parson then hiccoughed a song for which he should have been put in the stocks, after which Mr. Wicks, with three empty bottles and three knives to stand for the gallows, gave us a vivid account of the turning-off of the famous Captain Suck Ensor, who kicked and twitched for ten minutes before his own claimed him.
It was five o'clock next morning before my courier returned with Nance Lousely and her father. I had gone to sleep in the Squire's elbow-chair before the hall fire, with the zealous thief-takers in attendance, turn and turn about, as sentries over me, fifty guineas being well worth guarding. The butler watched at the door, wakefully anxious to earn the crown I had promised him. The noise he made in unchaining and unbolting the door awakened me, and it warmed my heart to see Nance standing timidly just inside the hall, her hand in her father's, till she spied me, when she broke away and ran up to me.
"You knew I'd come, sir, didn't you?" she said, appealing to me more with her pretty anxious face than by her words.
"Of course, ghostie!" I replied promptly.
"Thank you, sir!" she said, with evident relief. At a trace of doubt in my words or face, she would have broken down.
"Don't be a goose, ghostie," said I. "Sit down and get warm! And how are you. Job? Much obliged to you both."
"We'n ridden main hard to get here, sir. Your mon didna get t'our 'ouse afore one o'clock, an' we wor on the way afore ha'f-past. Gom! We wor that'n. Our Nance nearly bust. Gom, she did that'n."
"Your Nance is a darling," said I, stroking her disordered hair.
At my request backed by a promise to turn the crown into half a guinea, the butler got them some breakfast. Fortunately the Squire and the parson were due at a duck-shooting ten miles off by seven o'clock, and so were stirring early. My matter was soon settled. The Squire sat magisterially in his elbow-chair, and Nance and her father told their tale, precisely as I had told it before them. It cleared me and made the thief-catchers look mightily confused and sheepish, and very relieved they were when, as a politic way of staving off awkward questions, I grandly accepted their apologies.