Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/727

Rh seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the haunted house.

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, "Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged the favor of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.

"She's a true one, sir," said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. "No mistake about her sir."

"Ikey," said I, "don't mention it; I have seen something in this house."

"No, sir" he whispered, greedily opening his eyes.

"'Ooded lady, sir?"

"Don't be frightened," said I. " It was a figure rather like you."

"Lord, sir!"

"Ikey!" said I, shaking hands with him warmly, I may say affectionately, "if there is any truth in these ghost stories, the greatest service I can do you is to fire at that figure. And I promise you by heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!"

The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to him because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl's case was exactly similar. She went about the