Captain Campbell listened in astonishment and in credulity.
"Now, Master Guy, what do you think of that?" exclaimed Mrs. Tom, when she had finished.
"My dear madam," replied the young man, gravely, "the man, excited, half crazed, delirious as he was, must have imagined all this. No such horrible thing could have ever occurred in a Christian land."
"But he wasn't crazy," asserted Mrs. Tom, almost angry at having the truth of the story doubted. "He was just as sensible, all through, as you or I. He wasn't colirious a mite."
"Now, Mrs. Tom, it's not possible that, with all your good sense, you can credit such an incredible tale."
"But, Master Guy, the man told it on his death-bed. Think o' that."
"And doubtless believed it, too; but that does not make it any more probable. I have heard of such cases before. It is all owing to the imagination, my dear lady. He had fancied this story, and thought about it so long, that he at last believed it himself."
"Well, I don't know nothin' 'bout the 'magination, thank my heavenly Master," said Mrs. Tom, in a sort of sullen unbelief; "but I do know, ef you was to talk till this time to-morrow, you couldn't make me believe differently. I shouldn't wonder now ef you tried to make me think the face I seed stuck at the winder was all 'magination, too."
"I was just about to say so," said Guy, repressing a smile. "It could be nothing else, you know. The hour of night, the thrilling tale, and the man's dying cry that he saw her there, would have made you imagine anything; therefore——"
But Mrs. Tom's wrath was rising. She had been inwardly priding herself on the sensation her story would create, and this fall to her hopes was more than she could patiently endure.