It was a gusty night; the wind violently high even for the seaside; and Miss Thornycroft sat over the fire in her own sitting-room, listening to it as it whirled round the house and went booming away over the waste of waters.

Anna Chester was with her. Anna had shunned the Red Court of late; but she could not always refuse Miss Thornycroft\'s invitations without attracting notice; and she had heard that Isaac was to be away from home that day.

They had spent the hours unhappily. Heavy at heart, pale in countenance, subdued in spirit, it seemed to each that nothing in the world could bring pleasure again. Anna was altered just as much as Miss Thornycroft; worn, thin, haggard-eyed. Captain Copp\'s wife, seeing the change in Anna, and knowing nothing of the real cause, set it down to one that must inevitably bring discovery of the marriage in its train, and was fretting herself into fiddle-strings. Dinner was over; tea was taken; the evening went on. Quite unexpectedly Mr. Thornycroft and his eldest son arrived; Anna saw also, to her dismay, that Isaac was in; but none of them approached the sitting-room. Hyde, coming in later to replenish the fire, said the justice was not very well, and had retired to rest; Mr. Richard and Mr. Isaac had gone out. And the two girls sat on together, almost hearing the beating of each other\'s hearts.

"I wonder if the ghost is abroad this windy night!" exclaimed Anna, as a wild gust dashed against the windows and shook the frames.

"Don\'t joke about that, Anna," said Miss Thornycroft, sharply.

Anna looked round in surprise: nothing had been further from her thoughts than to joke; and indeed she did not know why she said it. "Of course the report is a very foolish one," she resume& "I cannot think how any people can profess to believe it."

"Isaac saw it last night," said Mary Anne, quietly.

"Nonsense!" cried Anna.

"Ah! so I have answered when others said they saw it. But Isaac is cool and practical; entirely without superstition; the very last man I know, save perhaps Richard, to be led away by fear or fancy. He was passing the churchyard when he saw--if not Robert Hunter, some one dressed up to personate him; but the features were Robert Hunter\'s features, Isaac says; they were for a moment as distinct as ever he had seen them in life."

"Did he tell you this?"

"Yes."

"Could he have been deceived by his imagination?"

"I think not. When a cool, collected man, like my brother Isaac, dispassionately asserts such a thing, in addition to the terrified assertions of others, I at least believe that there must be some dreadful mystery abroad, supernatural or otherwise."

"A mystery?"

"Yes, a mystery. Putting aside all questions of the figure, how is it that the coat can appear in the churchyard, when it remains all the while in safe custody at the Mermaid?"

Anna sat down, overwhelmed with the confusion of ideas that presented themselves. The chief one that struggled upwards was--how should she ever have courage to pass the churchyard that night?

"Mary Anne! why did he not speak to it?"

"Because some people came up at the time, and prevented it. When he looked again the figure was gone."

Precisely so. All this, just as Mary Anne described it, had happened to Isaac Thornycroft on the previous night. Robert Hunter, the hat drawn low on his pale face, the unmistakeable coat buttoned round him, had stood there in the churchyard, looking just as he had looked in life. To say that Isaac was not staggered would be wrong--he was--but he recovered himself almost instantly, and was about to call out to the figure, when Mr. Kyne came past with young Connaught, and stopped him. Isaac and his family had to guard against certain discoveries yet; and in the presence of the superintendent of the coastguard, whose suspicions were already too rife, he did not choose to proceed to investigation.

Silence supervened. The young ladies sat on over the fire, each occupied with her sad and secret thoughts. The time-piece struck half-past eight.

"What can have become of Sarah?" exclaimed Anna. "Mrs. Copp was not well, and my Aunt Amy said she should send for me early."

Scarcely had the words left her lips, when that respectable personage entered head foremost. Giving the door a bang, she sank into an arm-chair. Anna stood up in wonder; Miss Thornycroft looked round.

"You may well stare, young ladies, but I can\'t stand upon no forms nor ceremonies just now. I don\'t know whether my senses is here or yonder, and I made bold to come in at the hall door, as being the nearest, and make straight for here. There\'s the ghost at this blessed moment in the churchyard."

Anna, with a faint cry, drew near to Miss Thornycroft, and touched her for company. The latter spoke.

"Your fancy must have deceived you, Sarah."

"If anything has deceived me, it\'s my eyes," returned Sarah, really too much put out to stand on any sort of ceremony whether in speech or action--"which is what they never did yet, Miss Thornycroft. When it struck eight my mistress told me to go for Miss Chester. I thought I\'d finish my ironing first, which took me another quarter of an hour; and then I put my blanket and things away to come. Just as I was opening the house door I heard the master\'s voice singing out for me, and went into the parlour. \'Is it coals, sir?\' I asked. \'No, it\'s not coals,\' says he; and I saw by his mouth he was after some nonsense. \'It\'s to tell you to take care of the ghost.\' \'Oh, bran the ghost,\' says I; \'I should give it a knock if it come anigh me.\' And so I should, young ladies."

"Go on, go on," cried Mary Anne Thornycroft.

"I come right on to the churchyard, and what we had been saying made me turn my eyes to it as I passed. Young ladies," she continued, drawing the chair closer, and dropping her voice to a low, mysterious key, "if you\'ll believe me, there stood Robert Hunter. He was close by that big tombstone of old Marley\'s, not three yards from his own grave!"

Mary Anne Thornycroft seemed unwilling to admit belief in this, in spite of what she had herself been relating to Miss Chester. "Rely upon it, Sarah, your fears deceived you."

"Miss, I hadn\'t got any fears; at any rate, not before I saw him. There he was: his features as plain as ever they\'d need be, and that uncommon coat on, which I\'m sure was never made for anybody but a Guy Fawkes."

"Were you frightened then?"

"I was not frightened, so to say, but I won\'t deny that I felt a creepishness in my skin; and I\'d have given half-a-crown out of my pocket to see any human creature come up to bear me company. I might have spoke to it if it had give me time: I don\'t know: but the moment it saw me it glided amid the gravestones, making for the back of the church. I made off too as fast as my legs would carry me, and come straight in here. I knew my tongue must let it out, and I thought it better for you to hear it than them timorous servants in the kitchen."

"Quite right," murmured Miss Thornycroft.

"I never did believe in ghosts," resumed Sarah; "never thought to do it, and I\'m not going to begin now. But after to-night, I won\'t mock at the poor wretches that have been frightened by Robert Hunter\'s."

What now was to be done? Anna Chester would not attempt to go home and pass the churchyard with no protector but Sarah. Hyde was not to be found; and there seemed nothing for it but to wait until Richard or Isaac came in.

But neither came. Between nine and ten Captain Copp made his appearance in hot anger, shaking his stick and stamping his wooden leg at Sarah.

Had the vile hussey taken up her gossiping quarters at the Red Court Farm for the night? Did she think--

"I could not get Miss Chester away," interposed Sarah, drowning the words. "The ghost is in the churchyard. I saw it as I came past."

The sailor-captain was struck dumb. One of his women-kind avow belief in a ghost? He had seen a mermaid himself; which creatures were known to exist; but ghosts were fabulous things, fit for nothing but the fancies of marines. Any sailor in his fo\'castle that had confessed to seeing ghosts, would have got a taste of the yardarm. "Get your things on this minute," concluded the captain, angrily, to Anna. "I\'ll teach you to be afraid of rubbishing ghosts! And that vile bumboat woman! coming here with such a tale!"

"It\'s my opinion ghosts is rubbish, and nothing better; for I don\'t see the good of \'em; but this was Robert Hunter\'s for all that," spoke the undaunted "bumboat-woman." "I saw his face and his eyes as plain as ever I see my own in the glass, and that precious white coat of his with the ugly fur upon it. Master, you can\'t say that I gave as much as half an ear to this talk before to-night."

"You credulous sea-serpent!" was the captain\'s retort. "And that same coat lying yet in the tallet at the Mermaid with the blood upon it, just as it was taken off the body! Ugh! fie upon you!"

"If there\'s apparitions of bodies, there may be apparitions of coats," reasoned Sarah, between whom and her choleric but good-hearted master there was always a fight for the last word. "If it hadn\'t been for knowing his face, I should say some ill-conditioned jester had borrowed the coat from the Mermaid and put it on."

Away pegged the captain in his rage, scarcely allowing himself to say good-night to Miss Thornycroft; and away went Sarah and Miss Chester after him, as close as circumstances permitted.

As they neared the churchyard Anna ventured to lay hold of the captain\'s arm, and bent her head upon it, in spite of his mocking assurances that a parson\'s daughter ought to be on visiting terms with a churchyard ghost; trusting to him to guide her steps. The captain was deliberating, as he avowed afterwards, whether to guide her into the opposite ditch, believing that a ducking would be the best panacea for all ghostly fears; when Sarah, who was a step in the rear, leaped forward and clung violently to his blue coat-tails.

"There!" she cried in a shrill whisper, before the astonished gentleman could free his tails or give vent to proper indignation, "there it is again, behind old Marley\'s tomb! Now then, master, is that the coat, or is it not?"

The captain was surprised into turning his eyes to the churchyard; Anna also, as if impelled by some irresistible fascination. It was too true. Within a few yards of them, in the dim moonlight--for the cloudy moon gave but a feeble light--appeared the well-known form of the ill-fated Robert Hunter, the very man whose dead body Captain Copp had helped to lay in the grave, so far as having assisted as a mourner at his funeral.

The captain was taken considerably aback; had never been half so much so before an unexpected iceberg; his wooden leg dropped submissively down and his mouth f............