"No!" Mr. Coyne almost screamed it, rising from his chair. Dropping back weakly, he murmured, panting, "Not for me: not on any account!" His face was pale, and for the moment all the aggressiveness had gone out of him. He lifted a hand weakly to his heart. "A sudden faintness," he groaned, closing his eyes. "If you two men had any feelin's, you'd offer to see me home." "The pair of us?" asked Mr. Jope suavely. "I scale over seventeen stone," murmured Mr. Coyne, still with his eyes closed; "an' a weight like that is no joke." Mr. Jope nodded. "You're right there; so you'd best give it over. Sorry to seem heartless, sir, but 'tis for your good: an' to walk home in your state would be a sin, when we can fix you up a bed in the house." Mr. Coyne opened his eyes, and they were twinkling vindictively. "Sleep in this house?" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't do it, not for a thousand pound!" "W'y not?" "You'll find out 'why not,' safe enough, afore the mornin'! Why 'twas in kindness--pure kindness--I asked the pair of ye to see me home. I wouldn't be one to stay in this house alone arter nightfall--no, or I wouldn't be one to leave a dog alone here, let be a friend. My daughter didn't tell, I reckon, as this place was ha'nted?" "Ha'nted?" "Aye. By females too." "O--oh!" Mr. Adams, who had caught his breath, let it escape in a long sigh of relief. "Like Symonds's," he murmured. "Not a bit like Symonds's," his friend corrected snappishly. "He's talkin' o' dead uns--ghosts--that is, if I take your meanin', sir?" Mr. Coyne nodded. "That's it. Ghosts." "Get out with you!" said Mr. Adams, incredulous. "You must be a pair of very simple men," said landlord Coyne, half-closing his eyes again, "if you reckoned that forty pound would rent a place like this without some drawbacks. Well, the drawbacks is ghosts. Four of 'em, and all females." "Tell us about 'em, sir," requested Mr. Jope, dropping into his seat. "An' if Bill don't care to listen, he can fill up his time by takin' the jug an' steppin' down to the cellar." "Damned if I do," said Mr. Adams, stealing a glance over his shoulder at the statues. "It's a distressin' story," began Mr. Coyne with a very slight flutter of the eyelids. "Maybe my daughter told you--an' if she didn't, you may have found out for yourselves--as how this here house is properly speakin' four houses--nothing in common but the roof, an' the cellar, an' this room we're sittin' in. . . . Well, then, back along there lived an old Rector here, with a man-servant called Oliver. One day he rode up to Exeter, spent a week there, an' brought home a wife. Footman Oliver was ready at the door to receive 'em, an' the pair went upstairs to a fine set o' rooms he'd made ready in the sou'-west tower, an' there for a whole month they lived together, as you might say, in wedded happiness.