The answer ‘George’ was deemed conclusive that all had been got up by that youth; and there was considerable evidence of his talent for ventriloquism and taste for practical jokes. My mother was certain that, having heard of the popular superstition, he had acted ghost. She appealed to _Woodstock_ to prove the practicability of such feats; and her absolute conviction persuaded the maids (who had given warning _en masse_) that the enemy was exorcised when George Sims had been sent off on the Royal Mail under Clarence’s guardianship. None of the junior part of the family believed him guilty, but he had hunted the cows round the paddock, mounted on my donkey, had nearly shot the kitchen-maid with Griff’s gun, and, if not much maligned, knew the way to the apple-chamber only too well,—so that he richly deserved his doom, rejoiced in it himself, and was unregretted save by Martyn. Clarence viewed him in the light of a victim, and tried to keep an eye on him, but he developed his talent as a ventriloquist, made his fortune, and retired on a public-house. My mother would fain have had the vaults under the mullion rooms bricked up, but Mr. Stafford cried out on the barbarism of such a proceeding. The mystery was declared to be solved, and was added to Mr. Stafford’s good stories of haunted houses. And at home my father forbade any further mention of such rank folly and deception. The inner mullion chamber was turned into a lumber-room, and as weeks passed by without hearing or seeing any more of lady or of lamp, we began to credit the wonderful freaks of the goblin page. CHAPTER XVI. CAT LANGUAGE. Soon as she parted thence—the fearful twayne, That blind old woman and her daughter deare, Came forth, and finding Kirkrapine there slayne, For anguish greate they gan to rend their heare And beate their breasts, and naked flesh to teare; And when they both had wept and wayled their fill, Then forth they ran, like two amazèd deere, Half mad through malice and revenging will, To follow her that was the causer of their ill.’—SPENSER. THE Christmas vacation was not without another breeze about Griffith’s expenses at Oxford. He held his head high, and declared that people expected something from the eldest son of a man of property, and my father tried to convince him that a landed estate often left less cash available than did the fixed salary of an office. Griff treated all in his light, good-humoured way, promised to be careful, and came to me to commiserate the poor old gentleman’s ignorance of the ways of the new generation.