Mrs. Macpherson wiped her hot face and took out her fan. But she could give as well as take. "It's what I have been thinking of you, ma'am. Do you think _you_ are quite right?" "I right!" screamed Mrs. Copp in a fury. "What do you mean?" "What do _you_ mean?--come!--about me?" "_That's_ plain. I never yet heard of a man who is dead and gone writing back letters to his friends. Who brings them? How do they come? Do they drop from the skies or come up through the graves?" "Lawk a mercy!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, not catching the full import of the puzzling questions. "They come through the post." Mrs. Copp was momentarily silenced. The answer was entirely practical: it was not given in anger; nor, as she confessed to herself, with any indication of insanity. Light dawned upon her mind. "It's the spirits!" she exclaimed, coming to a sudden conviction. "Well! Before I'd go in for that fashionable rubbish! A woman of any pretension to sense believe in _them!_" "Hang the spirits!" returned Mrs. Macpherson with offended emphasis. "I'm not quite such a fool as that. You should hear what the prefessor says of them. Leastways, not of the spirits, poor innocent things, which is all delusion, but of them there rapping mediums that make believe to call 'em up." "Then, ma'am, if it's not the spirits you allude to as bringing the letters, perhaps you'll explain to me what does bring them." "What _should_ bring them but the post?" Mrs. Copp was getting angry. "The post does not bring letters from dead men." "I never said it did. Robert Hunter's not dead." "Robert Hunter _is_." "Well, I'm sure!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, fanning herself. "Robert Hunter died last January," persisted Mrs. Copp, in excitement. "His unfortunate body lies under the sod in Coastdown churchyard, and his poor restless spirit hovers above it, frightening the people into fits. My son Sam saw it. Isaac Thornycroft saw it." "Robert Hunter is not dead," fired Mrs. Macpherson, who came to the conclusion that she was being purposely deceived; "he is gone to the East to make a railroad. Not that I quite know where the East is," acknowledged she, "or how it stands from this. I tell you all, I got a letter from him, and it was writ about six weeks ago." "If that lady is not mad, I never was so insulted before," cried Mrs. Copp. "I----" "There must be some mistake," interposed Mary Jupp, who had listened in great surprise. Of herself she could not solve the question, and knew nothing of the movements of Mr. Hunter. But she thought if he were dead that she should have heard of it from his sister Susan. "Perhaps it only requires a word of explanation." "I don't know what explanation it can require," retorted Mrs. Copp. "The man is dead and buried." "The man is not," contended Mrs. Macpherson; "he is alive and kicking, and laying down a railroad." "My son, Captain Copp, was a mourner at his funeral."