THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.
BY F. B. FORESTER.
"No, sir," the old keeper said reflectively. "I don't know no ghost stories; none as you'd care to hear, that is. But I could tell you of something that happened in these parts once, and it was as strange a thing as any ghost story I ever heard tell on."
I had spent the morning on the moor, grouse shooting, and mid-day had brought me for an hour's welcome rest to the lonely cottage, where the old superannuated keeper, father to the stalwart velvet-jacketed Hercules who had acted as my guide throughout the forenoon, lived from year's end to year's end with his son and half-a-dozen dogs for company. The level beams of the glowing August sun bathed in a golden glow the miles of purple moorland lying round us; air and scenery were good to breathe and to look on; and now, as the three of us sat on a turf seat outside the cottage door enjoying the soft sleepy inaction of the afternoon, a question of mine concerning the folk-lore of the district, after which, hardened materialist though I called myself, I was conscious of a secret hankering, had drawn the foregoing remark from the patriarchal lips.
"Let's hear it, by all means," said I, lighting my pipe and settling myself preparatory to listening. A slight grunt, resembling a stifled laugh, came from Ben the keeper.
"You'll have to mind, sir," he put in, a twinkle in his eye. "Dad believes what he's agoing to tell you, every word of it. It's gospel truth to him."
"Ay, that I do," responded the old man warmly. "And why shouldn't I? Didn't I see it with my own eyes? And seein's believin', ain't it?"
"You arouse my curiosity," I said. "Let us have the story by all means, and if it is a personal experience, so much the better."
"Well, sir," began the old man, evidently gratified by these signs of interest, and casting a triumphant glance at his son, "what I've got to tell you don't belong to this time of day, of course. When I says I was a little chap of six years old or thereabouts, and that I'll be eighty-five come Michaelmas, you'll understand that it must have been a tidy sight of years ago.