It was five o'clock next morning before my courier returned with Nance
Lousely and her father. I had gone to sleep in the Squire's elbow-chair
before the hall fire, with the zealous thief-takers in attendance, turn
and turn about, as sentries over me, fifty guineas being well worth
guarding. The butler watched at the door, wakefully anxious to earn the
crown I had promised him. The noise he made in unchaining and unbolting
the door awakened me, and it warmed my heart to see Nance standing timidly
just inside the hall, her hand in her father's, till she spied me, when
she broke away and ran up to me.

"You knew I'd come, sir, didn't you?" she said, appealing to me more with
her pretty anxious face than by her words.

"Of course, ghostie!" I replied promptly.

"Thank you, sir!" she said, with evident relief. At a trace of doubt in
my words or face, she would have broken down.

"Don't be a goose, ghostie," said I. "Sit down and get warm! And how are
you. Job? Much obliged to you both."

"We'n ridden main hard to get here, sir. Your mon didna get t'our 'ouse
afore one o'clock, an' we wor on the way afore ha'f-past. Gom! We wor
that'n. Our Nance nearly bust. Gom, she did that'n."

"Your Nance is a darling," said I, stroking her disordered hair.

At my request backed by a promise to turn the crown into half a guinea,
the butler got them some breakfast. Fortunately the Squire and the parson