"H'm! I should think not. Likely to take a plunge over in the dark-- eh? By the way, what's the name of the verger at Wandsborough church? He seems a nice, civil sort of fellow. I rather liked the look of him, and he quite took me under his wing and looked after me. The bald-headed man." This would show that he had been at Wandsborough. "Brown, sir, it is. Oh yes, I know him well, he's been there a matter o' many years now. He's a downright good honest chap, is Brown," and then the loquacious one launched into a dissertation on the many good qualities and rare virtues of the official in question, which we shall spare the reader, even as he upon whom it was inflicted spared himself by promptly retiring to his room. Next morning, while the grey-bearded stranger was leisurely discussing a late breakfast, the talkative waiter bustled in. "Heard the news, sir? but of course you 'aven't--seeing you're only just up." "Quite right, my friend. And now, what's the excitement?" "Well, sir, they Bays as how young Mr Dorrien, he as we was talking about yesterday, he can't be found nowhere," said the man, hastening to discharge this last prime event with which his mind was burdened. "He went over to Cranston church by himself last night, and didn't come home all night." "H'm! I don't see anything very extraordinary in that. He may have had reasons of his own for being out all night, perhaps went somewhere by train, eh, don't you see?--young men, you know, will be young men--and missed his train back." "No, sir, depend upon it there's something wrong," dissented the other, provoked at the stranger's imperturbability. He had taken a great liking to him, "a pleasant-spoken, haffable gent as ever was, and yet a gent every hinch of him, as anybody might see" had been his verdict, in camera, with his colleagues below stairs. "Mistress Dorrien they say is that scared, and she's going to have the country searched for him. He's come to grief, 'e has. He carrier from Wandsbro', he as brought the news--he says"--and here the man's voice fell to what he intended to be a most impressive and mysterious whisper--"he says that one of them down at Minchkil Bay was coming home along the beach by moonlight and saw the Dorriens' wraith on `The Skegs.' The ghost always appears before the death of a Dorrien." The stranger looked quickly round as a violent shiver ran through him from head to foot. "Just shut that door, will you? When the front door is open as well, the most infernal draught finds its way in here. It's enough to give a man his death. Thanks. What were you saying? Something about a ghost?" Only too delighted with the opportunity, our voluble friend proceeded redundantly to regale the stranger's ears with the dour legend we heard narrated by very different lips nearly at the commencement of this narrative. But the listener proved sadly sceptical.