"Well done, Tilly! Does any one intend to wait up for the ghost? What time does it come?" "One o’clock, Miss, as punctual as a time-piece. But could you suppose, Miss, any one would dare to wait up and see it?" "Then how have they seen it, in the name of folly?" "Why, Miss, I’ll tell you. One of the carriage-horses got an inflammation in his eyes, and the farrier give orders to have it sponged never more than three hours between, and so William Edwards, the head-groom if you please, Miss"--Tilly curtseyed here, because this was her legitimate sweetheart--"he stops up till one o’clock to see to it, and then Job Leyson goes instead. So William come in, Miss, on Monday night, to go to bed, please, Miss, and he took the short cut, not that he were allowed, Miss, or would think of taking a liberty on no account whatever, but he were that sleepy he didn’t know the way to bed, so he went across the corridor for the short cut from the kitchen gallery to the servants’ passage; and there he saw--he hadn’t any light, Miss, and the lamps all out--Goodness me! Whatever was that? Did you hear it, Miss?" "Yes, and see it, Tilly; it’s a daddy in your candle. Go on, Tilly, will you. Am I to stop here all night and get as bad as you are?" "There William Edwards, a man who never swears or drinks, there he saw all in the dark, coming so stately down the corridor, as if it hadn’t room enough, with one arm up like this, a tall pale melancholy ghost, and he knew it was the lady who was wronged and killed, when the great wars was, Miss, two hundred year agone." "Well, Tilly, and did he speak to it?" "He was that frightened, Miss, he could not move or speak; but he fell again the wall in the side-passage, with his eyes coming out of his head, and his hair up like my wicker-broom. And then she vanished away, and he got to bed, and did perspire so, they was forced to wring the blankets." "Capital, Tilly! And who saw her the next night?" "Why that nincompoop Job Leyson, Miss. Our William was a deal too wise to go that way any more, but he tell Job Leyson, and he a foolish empty fellow, perhaps you know, Miss. ’Ho,’ says Job, ’I often hear tell of her, to-night I’ll have a peep.’ So last night when William went to bed on the servants’ side, down comes Job and takes the front way, pretty impudent of him I think. And, Miss, I don’t know what he see, I never says much to him; but there they found him in the saddle-room, at five o’clock this morning, with his heels up on a rack, and his head down in the bucket, and never a bit of sponge had come near the poor mare’s eye." "Oh, thank you, Tilly. Perhaps you had better snuff your candle. No ghost will have much chance that comes near my Judy." And with that I went to bed, tired of such nonsense.