“Who’s next――next?” cried the victor. “Will e’er a one of ye have a shy for a pot, or wont ye? I’ll tak two to one I gets the three fronts, and I’ll take it even I floors ’em.” “I’ll back Billy agen ’ee for a gallon, if ye like,” cried a man. “Nay, nay,” cried a loud but not inharmonious voice; “if old Nick were here――――” “Hoosh! hoosh!” shouted out half a dozen of the throng. “Who cares about your hooshing? I beant afeared of no mortal thing; no immortal, for the matter of that; neither man, beast, or sperrit.” The voice came from a young woman, who was finely, though perhaps almost too lustily, formed. “Ye’ere all a pack of fools!” said she, giving her head an indignant shake. “A frightenen yourselves about Mother Brickett’s ghost. Who is there as has seen it, I should like to know?” “I ha’,” said a man. “I wer a walking across the common here, when I found a somethink white and ghastly walking by my side.” “How big was it?” “About my height, as nigh as can be. An’ it never sed a word. An’ just as I was ready to drop, it fanished away.” “And then we all knows,” said another, “as only t’other night her voice was heard in the passage by the tap-room where she called Brickett three times by name, and many bein’ by. An’ it was only yesternight as she came and patted the white cow while Clara wer a milkin’ on it.” “This be very sartin,” said a tall, pale woman, with a child in her arms: “if she could come back arter she’d gone she ’ould. Her mind was all here when she died. When she was in her last hour her little darter came up to see how she was agoin’ on. ‘Mind the bisness,’ said she, quite sharp; and when Brickett came up, she sent him down pretty quickish. ‘Don’t mind me, mind the customers’――them were her last words. And she were an audacious woman after money, sure alive.” There is hardly any country place in the United Kingdom but owns some superstitution, which many of the inhabitants have full belief in. At all ages, and in every place, there have been found many who have entertained the belief that at certain periods the dead are permitted to revisit the earth for a brief period; and it was said in the neighbourhood that the deceased landlady of the “Carved Lion” could not rest in her grave without, in disembodied spirit, occasionally hovering about the old hostelry. She had been a hard-fisted, money-loving woman in her time, and the frequenters of the inn were wont to talk about her ghost being seen on the common, in one of the dark lanes or elsewhere, in the “witching time of night.” “She must have growed a good bit since she died,” said the woman, who had been called Nelly, “for she was a good deal shorter than that gawk there when she wur here. It’s all nonsense, I tell ’ee. If people goes to a better world they don’t want to come back to a place like this, and if they go to another place――――” “Hoosh――hoosh!” exclaimed several voices.