"Yes—I—I'll hold it. Keep up your courage, and don't shake now. Oh, what a coward you are!"
"Well, that's a good one. You are shaking so yourself that you will have the light out, if you don't mind. Do try and be a little steady with it; and your teeth chatter so in your head, that they are for all the world like a set of castanets."
"Oh, how you do talk. Come, listen at the door; I must say I don't hear anything; but I have the greatest respect for ghosts, I have. I never say one word against the dead—God bless 'em all!"
While this man held the light—or rather waved it to and fro in his agitation—the other, with his ear placed flat against the panel of the door, listened attentively. All was perfectly still in the first-floor, and he said—
"Perhaps they haven't begun yet, you know."
"Perhaps not;—shall we go away, now?"
"Oh, no—no. There's no end of curious things in the room; and now that we are here, let's go in, at all events, and have a little look about us. Don't be afraid. Come—come."
"Oh—I—I ain't exactly afraid, only, you see, I don't see much the use of going in, and—and, you know, we have already heard an odd noise in the shop, to-night."
"But that was nothing, for I looked, you know."
"Yes—yes,—but—but I'm afraid the fire will go out below, do you know."