Fine tidings to go flying about Church Dykely in the twilight! Lawyer Nave half killed, his daughter quite. The news reached us at Dyke Manor; and Squire Todhetley, though holding Caromel’s Farm in little estimation, thought it only neighbourly to walk over there and inquire how much was true, how much not. You remember what happened. That in leaving the farm after interviewing Grizzel, we found ourselves in contact with Dobbs the blacksmith. Dobbs standing stock-still, like a marble pillar, outside the gate under the dark, overhanging trees; Dobbs standing on the watch, in a stealthy, mysterious manner, without his boots.
“But what on earth are you here for, Dobbs?” reiterated the Squire. “Where are your boots?”
And all Dobbs did for answer, was to lay his hand respectfully on the Squire’s coat-sleeve to begin with, so as to prevent his running away. Then he entered upon his whispered tale. Leaning our arms upon the low gate, we listened to it, and to the curious sound of weeping and wailing that stole faintly on our ears from amongst the garden trees. The scene altogether looked weird enough in the moonlight, flickering through the rustling leaves.
Dobbs, naturally an unbeliever in ghosts, had grown to think that this ghost, so long talked of, was no ghost at all, but some one got up to resemble one by Caromel’s Farm, for some mysterious purpose of its own. Remembering his attack of fright, and resenting it excessively, Dobbs determined if possible to unearth the secret: and this was the third night he had come upon the watch.
“But why stand without your boots?” whispered the Squire, who could not get over the shoeless feet.
“That I may make no noise in running to pounce upon him, sir,” Dobbs whispered back. “I take ’em off and hide ’em in the copse behind here. They be just at your back, Master Johnny.”
“Pounce upon whom?” demanded the Squire. “Can’t you speak plainly?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” breathed Dobbs. “I feel nearly sure, Squire, that the—the thing looking like Nash Caromel is not Nash Caromel. Nor his ghost, either.”
“I never saw two faces more alike, and I have just seen it now,” put in the Squire. “At least, as much as a shadow can look like a face.”
“Ay,” assented Dobbs. “I’m as sure, sir, as I am of my own forge, that it is a likeness got up by Nave to scare us. And I’ll eat the forge,” added Dobbs with emphasis, “if there’s not something worse than ghosts at Caromel’s Farm—though I can’t guess what it is.”