‘Lor’! you never mean “_ghosts_,” sir?’ said the old woman. ‘I do, indeed, Mrs Bizzey. I suppose you believe that spirits (or ghosts, as you call them) may re-appear after death?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ interposed the husband; ‘for I mind the night that my poor mother lay dying, there was an apparition of a turkey-cock that sat upon the palings opposite our cottage, and when it fluttered off ’em with a screech, just for all the world like a real turkey, you know, sir, she turned on her side suddenly, and give up the ghost. I’ve always believed in apparitions since then.’ ‘And when my sister Jane lay in of her last,’ chimed in Mrs Bizzey, ‘there was a little clock stood on the mantel-shelf that had always been wound up regular and gone regular ever since she was married; and we was moving a lot of things to one side, and we moved that clock and found it had stopped; and the nurse, she said to me, “Mark my words if that’s not a warning of death;” and, sure enough, Jane died before the morning, which makes me so careful of moving a clock since then that I’d rather go three miles round than touch one if a body lay sick in the house.’ ‘I see that you both take a most sensible view of the business, and are fully alive to the importance attached to it,’ I answered; ‘I hope, therefore, to secure your assistance to find out what these unusual and mysterious noises in your house portend, and what the authors require us to do for them.’ Then—whilst the old man scratched his head with bewilderment, and the old woman looked scared out of her seven senses—I explained to them, as well as I was able, the nature of a séance, and asked them if they would come and sit at the table with me that evening and hold one. ‘But, lawk a mussy, sir, you never want to speak to them!’ cried Mrs Bizzey. ‘How else are we to ascertain for what reason these spirits disturb your lodgers and render your rooms uninhabitable by their pranks?’ ‘I should die of fright before we had been at it five minutes,’ was her comment; but her husband was pluckier, and took a more practical view of the matter. ‘You’ll just do as I bid you, missus, and hold your chatter. There’s no doubt these noises are a great nuisance—not to say a loss—and if this gentleman will be good enough to try and stop them, and can’t do without us, I’ll help him for one, and you will for another.’