"Fun, you call it?" remarked Jan. "If Hook's girl does die, it will lie at your door."
"She won't die," lightly answered John. "I'll send her a ten-pound note to make amends. Make you haste, Jan, if I am to wait."
Jan sped off to Hook's. He found the girl very ill, but not so much so as Cheese had intimated. Some unseemly quarrel had taken place in the cottage, which had agitated her.
"There's no danger," mentally soliloquised Jan, "but it has thrown her back a good two days."
He found John Massingbird—restless John!—restless as ever!—pacing before the trees with hasty strides, and bursting into explosions of laughter.
"Some woman was coming along from one of the cottages by Broom's and I appeared to her, and sent her on, howling," he explained to Jan. "I think it was Mother Sykes. The sport this ghost affair has been!"
He sat down on a bench, held his sides, and let his laughter have vent. Laughter is contagious, and Jan laughed with him, but in a quieter way.
"Whatever put it into your head to personate Frederick?" inquired Jan. "Was it done to frighten the people?"
"Not at first," answered John Massingbird.
"Because, if to frighten had been your motive, you need only have appeared in your own person," continued Jan. "You were thought to be dead, you know, as much as Fred was. Fred is dead, I suppose?"