Cornelius Heywood was silent. He shut his lips and opened his jaws till his cheeks almost met in the vacuum. A strange expression crossed the strange countenance, and the great eyes of his spectacles looked as if, at the very moment, they were seeing something no other spectacles could see. Then his jaws closed with a snap, his countenance brightened, a flash of humour came through the goggle eyes of pebble, and, at length, he actually smiled as he said--“Really, Katey, you must take me for a simpleton!” “How, uncle?” “To think, if I had ever seen a ghost, I would confess the fact before a set of creatures like you--all spinning your webs like so many spiders to catch and devour old Daddy Longlegs.” By this time Harry had grown quite grave. “Indeed, I am very sorry, uncle,” he said, “if I have deserved such a rebuke.” “No, no, my boy,” said Cornelius; “I did not mean it more than half. If I had meant it, I would not have said it. If you really would like--” Here he paused. “Indeed we should, uncle,” said Kate, earnestly. “You should have heard what we were saying just before you came in.” “All you were saying, Katey?” “Yes,” answered Kate, thoughtfully. “The worst we said was that you could not tell a story without--well, we did say tacking a moral to it.” “Well, well! I mustn’t push it. A man has no right to know what people say about him. It unfits him for occupying his real position amongst them. He, least of all, has anything to do with it. If his friends won’t defend him, he can’t defend himself. Besides, what people say is so often untrue!--I don’t mean to others, but to themselves. Their hearts are more honest than their mouths. But Janet doesn’t want a strange story, I am sure.” Janet certainly was not one to have chosen for a listener to such a tale. Her eyes were so small that no satisfaction could possibly come of it. “Oh! I don’t mind, uncle,” she said, with half-affected indifference, as she searched in her box for silk to mend her gloves. “You are not very encouraging, I must say,” returned her uncle, making another cow-face. “I will go away, if you like,” said Janet, pretending to rise. “No, never mind,” said her uncle hastily. “If you don’t want me to tell it, I want you to hear it; and, before I have done, that may have come to the same thing perhaps.” “Then you really are going to tell us a ghost story!” said Kate, drawing her chair nearer to her uncle’s; and then, finding this did not satisfy her sense of propinquity to the source of the expected pleasure, drawing a stool from the corner, and seating herself almost on the hearth-rug at his knee. “I did not say so,” returned Cornelius, once more. “I said I would tell you a strange story. You may call it a ghost story if you like; I do not pretend to determine what it is. I confess it will look like one, though.” After so many delays, Uncle Cornelius now plunged almost hurriedly into his narration.