“What a villain he must be: and Nave, too!” cried the Squire, rubbing his red nose, while Tod simply stared at the man. “But, look here, Dobbs—how could any man put on the face of Nash Caromel?”
“I don’t know how he does it, Squire, or what he does, but I’m good to find out,” returned the blacksmith. “And if—just hark there again, sirs!”
The same faint sounds of wailing, of entreaty in a woman’s voice, rose again upon the air. Dobbs, with a gesture to ask for silence, went noiselessly down the dark path in his brown woollen stockings, that looked thick enough for boots. Tod, eager for any adventure, stole after him, and I brought up the rear. The Squire remained where he was, and held the gate open, expecting perhaps that we might want to make a rush through it as he had just done.
Two minutes more, and the mystery was solved. Near the house, under the shade of the closely intersecting trees, stood old Grizzel and the figure people had taken to be the ghost of Nash Caromel. It was Grizzel’s voice we heard, full of piteous entreaty to him not to do something.
“Just for this night, master, for the love of Heaven! Don’t do it, just this night that I’m left in charge! They’ve trusted me, you see!”
The words seemed to make no impression. Pushing her hands back, the figure was turning impatiently away, when Dobbs seized upon it.
But, in sheer astonishment, or perhaps in terror, Dobbs let go again to step backwards; and the prize might have escaped but for the strong arms of Tod. It was indeed Nash Caromel. Not his ghost, but himself.
Nash Caromel worn to the veriest shadow mortal eyes ever gazed upon. The Squire came up; we all went into the house together, and explanation ensued.
Nash had not died. When the fever, of which it was feared he would die, reached its crisis, he awoke to life, not to death. But, terrified at his position—the warrant, applied for by Henry Tinkle, being out against him—overwhelmed with a sense of shame, he had feigned death as the only chance of escaping disgrace and punishment. The first thought perhaps was Nave’s; indeed there was no doubt of it—or his and his daughter’s combined. They wanted to keep the income, you see. Any way, they carried the thought out, and had successfully contrived to deceive doctors, undertakers, and the world. Nash, weak as a rat, had got out of bed to watch his own funeral procession wind down the avenue.
And there, in the upper rooms of the house, he had since lived until now, old Grizzel sharing the secret. But a grievous complaint, partly brought on by uneasiness of mind, partly inherited from his father, who had died of it, had speedily attacked Nash, one for which there was no cure. It had worn him to a shadow.