‘We was in a deep talk at the moment,’ continued Blore, ‘and Natty had just brought up that story about old Jeremiah Paddock’s crossing the park one night at one o’clock in the morning, and seeing Sir Blount a-shutting my lady out-o’-doors; and we was saying that it seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when we happened to look up, and there was Sir Blount a-walking along.’
‘Did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?’ whispered Hannah sepulchrally.
‘I don’t say ’twas it,’ returned Sammy. ‘God forbid that I should drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid manhood, and has to die! But he, or it, closed in upon us, as ’twere.’
‘Yes, closed in upon us!’ said Haymoss.
‘And I said “Good-night, strainger,”’ added Chapman.
‘Yes, “Good-night, strainger,”—that wez yer words, Natty. I support ye in it.’
‘And then he closed in upon us still more.’
‘We closed in upon he, rather,’ said Chapman.
‘Well, well; ’tis the same thing in such matters! And the form was Sir Blount’s. My nostrils told me, for—there, ’a smelled. Yes, I could smell’n, being to leeward.’
‘Lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal’s this about the ghost of a respectable gentleman?’ said Mrs. Martin, who had entered from the sitting-room.