"Come, Dick—don't be a fool," said the woman: "you don't think there is any ghosts here, do you?"
"Ghosts!" he exclaimed, with a convulsive start; then, after a moment's silence, during which his two companions surveyed him with curiosity and fear, he added in a low and subdued tone, "Bill, you know there wasn't a man in all the neighbourhood bolder than me up to the time when you got into trouble: you know that I didn't care for ghosts or churchyards, or dark rooms, or anything of that kind. Now it's quite altered. If even a man seed speret of a person, that man was me about two months ago!"
"What the devil does this mean?" cried Bolter, looking uneasily around him in his turn.
"Two months ago," continued Dick Flairer, "I was up Hackney way, expecting to do a little business with Tom the Cracksman,[26] which didn't come off; for Tom had been at the boozing-ken[27] all the night before, and had blowed his hand up in a lark with some davy's-dust.[28] Well, I wus coming home again, infernal sulky at the affair's breaking down, when just as I got to Cambridge-Heath-gate I heerd the gallopin' of horses. I looks round, nat'rally enough;—but who should I see upon a lovely chestnut mare——"
"Who?" said Bill anxiously.
"The speret of that wery same young feller as you and I threw down the trap at the old house in Chick Lane four year and some months ago!"
"Mightn't it have been a mistake, Dick?" demanded Bill.
"Why, of course it was," exclaimed the woman.
"No, it warn't," said Dick very seriously. "I never tell a lie to a pal,[29] Bill—and that you knows well enough. I seed that young man as plain as I can now see you, Bill—as plain as I see you, Polly Bolter. I thought I should have dropped: I fell right against a post in the footpath; but I took another good long look. There he was—the same face—the same hair—the same dress—everything the same! I couldn't be mistaken: I'd swear to it."
"And would you tell this story to the parish-prig,[30] if so be as you was going to Tuck-up Fair[31] to-morrow morning?" demanded Bill.