“But it was told me that you did see him.”
“I was always frightened for fear I should.”
“It strikes me you have had other causes for fright as well, Harriet,” cried shrewd Miss Timmens.
“Well, you see—this business of James Roe’s has put me about. Every knock that came to the door seemed to me to be somebody coming for him. My husband says the ghost is all rubbish and fancy, Aunt Susan.”
“Rubbish and fancy, does he?”
“He says that when he came in here with Johnny Ludlow, the night there was that commotion, in going up for some matches, he fell over something at the top of the stairs by the end casement, and flung it behind the rafters. Next day he saw what it was. I had tied a white cloth over a small dwarf mop to sweep the walls with, and must have left it near the window. I remembered that I did leave it there. It no doubt looked in the moonlight just like a white face. And that’s what was taken for David’s ghost.”
Miss Timmens paused, considering matters: she might believe just as much of this as she liked.
“It appeared again at the same place, Harriet, two or three days ago.”
“That was me, aunt. I saw you all looking up, and drew away again for fear you should know me. Mrs. James was making my bed, and I had crawled there.”
There it ended. So far the mystery was over. The explanation was confided to the public, who received it differently. Some accepted the mop version; others clung to the ghost. And Hill never had a penny of his rent. Louis Roe was away; and, as it turned out, did not come back again.