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 "You acted very correctly, Judkins, very correctly," replied the reverend gentleman. "Had I been in your position, I should doubtless have acted in precisely the same manner."

"You see," pursued Judkins, "things happened so rum. One morning one thing, another morning another—as true as I'm alive, sir, if you'll believe me, I sometimes don't even so much as know what's what.—Now, look here, ma'am," he added, turning to his mistress; "I beg pardon, ma'am, for being so bold, ma'am, but jist look here. Here was this blessed morning as ever was, ma'am, 'when I came down stairs and went into the garden, what should I see but my best plants walked from the hot-house and sunk into one of the onion beds."

"What, this morning!" exclaimed Aunt Eleanor.

"This blessed morning, ma'am—there they was."

"How very extraordinary," said his mistress.

"Amazing," exclaimed the reverend gentleman. "Were they injured at all?"

"Not the leasest," replied Judkins; "least ways they haven't taken much harm, except, p'r'aps, they've caught a little cold."

"But they were placed in the bed carefully?"

"Very. There wasn't a branch broke. That's the thing as gets over me so much! They seems not to want to hurt nothing: that don't seem to be their object, and as that ain't their object, what their object is, I can't guess. Sure-ly they might leave the plants alone; they can't have offended 'em in any individual way, no how. But that ain't all, ma'am. When I was a meditating over them serious, cook comes to me, and says, 'You've lit my fire, and gormandised every blessed egg."

"And you mean to say that you did not light the fire?" enquired his mistress, seriously.

"Never, ma'am. Upon my word and honour, ma'am. I wish I may never rear nothing, if I ever touched the fire. And, as to the eggs, ma'am, why, it stands to reason that I wouldn't think of touching 'em: I ain't eat a single egg this six months! I don't care a bit about 'em; and if I did, it ain't so likely that I'd go and do such a thing as that. Not a bit of it, ma'am, if you'll believe me. No: it's them fellows—whoever they are—and I on'y jist wish I could catch 'em. However they do it, wholly gets over me. F' instance, how did they get the pony and gig out? How could they get 'em out? Why, ma'am, I not only locked the stable door, and hung the key on the hook in the kitchen, but I had a piece of string that reached from that very door to my bedroom, and I slept with the other end round my toe, ma'am, all night: so, how they got in, I can't tell. It seems to me to be witchcraft, and nothing but."

Aunt Eleanor now very clearly perceived that these tricks were too paltry to be for one moment ascribed to the spirit of her brother; and having made up her mind to leave the village for a time, she at once resolved on spending a few weeks in London.