"Some did, sir," replied the General; "and we made a sort of a search; but it wasn't. There was a capital tiled floor, not a hole you could put a ramrod in; and no cat, neither—high windows, grated; and the door always close; and every now and then something broken by night."
"Delightful! That's what Mrs. Crowe, in that charming book, you know, "The Night Side of Nature," calls, I forget the name; but it's a German word, I think—the noisy ghost it means. Racket—something, isn't it, Beet?" (the short for Beatrix). "I do so devour ghosts!" cried sharp old Miss Blunket, who thought Beatrix's enthusiasm became her; and chose to exhibit the same pretty fanaticism.
"I didn't say it was a ghost, mind ye," interposed the General, with a grave regard for his veracity; "only we were puzzled a bit. There was something there we all knew; and something that could reach up to the high shelves, and break things on the floor too, you see. We had been watching, off and on, I think, some three or four weeks, and I heard one night, early, a row in the store-room—a devil of a row it was; but Smith was on dooty, as we used to say, that night, so I left it to him; and he could have sung out, you know, if he wanted help—poor fellow! And in the morning my native fellow told me that poor Smith was dead in the store-room; and, egad! so he was, poor fellow!"
"How awful!" exclaimed Beatrix.
And Miss Blunket, in girlish horror, covered her fierce black eyes with her lank fingers.
"A bite of a cobra, by Jove! above the knee, and another on the hand. A fattish fellow, poor Smith, the natives say they go faster—that sort of man; but no one can stand a fair bite of a cobra—I defy you. We killed him after."
"What! Smith?" whispered Linnett in his neighbour's ear.
"He lay in a basket; you never saw such a brute," continued the General; "he was very near killing another of my people."
"So there was your ghost?" said Doocey, archly.
"Worse than a ghost," observed Sir Paul Blunket.