"We all saw him, four or five of us," emphatically repeated Lizzy. "Hickens came to hear of it, and called us all the simpletons he could lay his tongue to. He told Hill—leastways we never knew who did if he didn't—and didn't she make a commotion! If ever she heard a syllable of such rubbish from us again, she said, we should all go packing: and she locked up the turret-door, and kept the key in her pocket for weeks." "You see, what staggers one is that Mr. Chandos should be alive," said Harriet. "One could understand if he were dead." "Nothing that's connected with ghosts, and those things, ought to stagger one at all," dissented Lizzy. "According to you, Lizzy Dene, the ghost only appears by fits and starts." "No more it does. Every two years or so. Any way it has been seen once since the time I tell you of when Mr. Chandos was abroad, which is four years ago, and now it's here again." "One would think you watched for it, Lizzy!" "And so I do. Often of a moonlight night, I get out of bed and go to that turret-window." Some one came quickly down the path at this juncture, brushing by me as I stood in the shade. It was the still room maid. She had a bundle in her hand, went on to the entrance, and then came into the ironing-room. Hill followed her in; but the latter remained at the back, looking at some ironed laces on a table, and not one of the girls noticed her presence. The still-room maid advanced to the ironing-board, let her bundle fall on it, and threw up her arms in some excitement. "I say, you know Mrs. Peters, over at the brook! Well—she's dead." "Dead!" echoed the girls, pausing in their work. "Why it was not a week ago that she was here." "She's dead. They were laying her out when I came by just now. Some fever, they say, which took her off in no time; a catching fever, too. A mortal fright it put me in, to hear that; I shouldn't like to die yet awhile." "If fever has broke out in the place, who knows but it's fever that has taken my lady!" exclaimed Emma, her stupid face alive with consternation: and the rest let their irons drop on their stands. "All our lives may be in jeopardy." "Your places will be in greater jeopardy if you don't pay a little more attention to work, and leave off talking nonsense," called out the sharp voice of Mrs. Hill from the background. The servants started round at its sound, and the irons were taken up again. CHAPTER XVI. DISTURBED BY MRS. CHANDOS.