"And it was that—that folly, that put you into the state of tremor in which Broom found you?" said Mr. Verner. "It was nothing else?"
"I declare, before Heaven, that it was what I saw as put me into the fright young Broom found me in," she repeated earnestly.
"But if you were so silly as to be alarmed for the moment, why do you continue to show alarm still?"
"Because my husband says he'll shake me," she whimpered, after a long pause. "He never has no patience with ghosts."
"Serve you right," was the half-audible comment of Mr. Verner. "Is this all you know of the affair?" he continued, after a pause.
"It's all, sir," she sobbed. "And enough too. There's only one thing as I shall be for ever thankful for."
"What's that?" asked Mr. Verner.
"That my poor Luke was away afore this happened. He was fond of hankering after Rachel, and folks might have been for laying it on his shoulders; though, goodness knows, he'd not have hurt a hair of her head."
"At any rate, he is out of it," observed John Massingbird.
"Ay," she replied, in a sort of self-soliloquy, as she turned to leave the room, for Mr. Verner told her she was dismissed, "it'll be a corn o' comfort amid my peck o' troubles. I have fretted myself incessant since Luke left, a-thinking as I could never know comfort again; but perhaps it's all for the best now, as he should ha' went."