His shadow! The same word that Dobbs had used. Francis Radcliffe told this story everywhere, and it caused no little excitement.
“What does this silly rumour mean—about Nash Caromel being seen?” demanded the Squire one day when he met Nave, and condescended to stop to speak to him.
And Nave, hearing the question, turned quite blue: the pater told us so when he came home. Just as though Nave saw the apparition before him then, and was frightened at it.
“The rumour is infamous,” he answered, biting his cold lips to keep down his passion. “Infamous and ridiculous both. Emanating from idle fools. I think, sir, as a magistrate, you might order these people before you and punish them.”
“Punish people for thinking they see Caromel’s ghost!” retorted the Squire. “Bless my heart! What an ignorant man (for a lawyer) you must be! No act has been passed against seeing ghosts. But I’d like to know what gives rise to the fancy about Caromel.”
The rumour did not die away. How could it, when from time to time the thing continued to be seen? It frightened Mary Standish into a fit. Going to Caromel’s Farm one night to beg grace for something or other that her ill-doing husband, Jim, then working on the farm, had done or left undone, she came upon a wonderfully thin man standing in the nook by the dairy window, and took him to be the bailiff, who was himself no better than a walking lamp-post. “If you please, sir,” she was beginning, thinking to have it out with him instead of Mrs. Caromel, “if you please, sir——”
When, upon looking into his pale, stony face, she saw the late master. He vanished into air or into the wall, and down fell Mary Standish in a fainting-fit. The parish grew uneasy at all this—and wondered what had been done to Nash, or what he had done, that he could not rest.
One night I was coming, with Tod, across from Mrs. Scott’s, who lived beyond Hyde Stockhausem’s. We took the field way from Church Dykely, as being the shortest route, and that led us through the copse at the back of Caromel’s Farm. It was a very light night, though not moonlight; and we walked on at a good rate, talking of a frightful scrape Sam Scott had got into, and which he was afraid to tell his mother of. All in a moment, just in the middle of the copse, we came upon a man standing amongst the trees, his face towards us. Tod turned and I turned; and we both saw Nash Caromel. Now, of course, you will laugh. As the Squire did when we got home (in a white heat) and told him: and he called us a couple of poltroons. But, if ever I saw the face of Nash Caromel, I saw it then; and if ever I saw a figure that might be called a shadow, it was his.
“Fine gentlemen, both of you!” scoffed the Squire. “Clear and sensible! Seen a ghost, have you, and confess to it! Ho, ho! Running through the back copse, you come upon somebody that you must take for an apparition! Ha, ha! Nice young cowards! I’d write an account of it to the Worcester papers if I were you. A ghost, with glaring eyes and a white face! Death’s head upon a mopstick, lads! I shouldn’t have wondered at Johnny; but I do wonder at you, Joe,” concluded the Squire, smoothing down.
“I am no more afraid of ghosts than you are, father,” quietly answered Joe. “I was not afraid when we saw—what we did see; I can’t answer for Johnny. But I do declare, with all my senses (which you are pleased to disparage) about me, that it was the form and face of Nash Caromel, and that ‘it’ (whatever it might be) seemed to vanish from our sight as we looked.”