no threshing done yet, but the oats and
barley was still mowed up, just as it first
stood. The door of this barn was ever so
little ajar, as if it had been pulled-to from
the inside, but hadn't come quite home. My
father and another goes inside the barn, the
rest was too scared to follow, and they soon
sees that somebody had been there, for ever
so many sheaves was scattered about on the
threshing-floor. Up they climbs amongst the
oats, and as my father was groping about in
the dark, he .strikes his face agin something;
he puts out his hand, and feels a pair of legs
hanging down. He remembered then, all in
a moment, that there was a beam above that
could be reached from the top of the stack,
afore the sheaves was thrown down, and he
cried out to his partner to set the barn doors
wide open, and then there come in a stream
of light, and poor Mr. Reeve was seen hanging
from the beam, with a rope round his
neck. They cut him down directly, but it
was of no use; he was quite dead.

"Mr. Reeve, as I told you before, sir, had
relations as was well-to-do; and though
there couldn't be no doubt that he died by
his own hand, he was buried like a Christian,
not like old Harry Pike; but then he was
hated, and everybody liked poor Mr. Reeve,
and pitied his case. What he did it for
seemed pretty certain — love for Miss Emily.
Letters was found as told all that story. It
came out, from one thing and another, that
she warn't the gentleman's sister after all.
Nayther was she his wife. He was a young
gentleman of high family, married to some
one else afore he seed her, which was at a
circus in Bath, where she rode the flying
horse in the ring. There was a bill of the
performance found in Mr. Reeve's desk, with
her name in it. 'Miss Emily Featherweight'
(that couldn't have been her real name) ' the
ee-questrian wonder,' with a picter of her in
a hat and feathers leaping her horse through
a circle of fire; but my father said it warn't
nigh handsome enough, for the bright eyes
warn't there, and you couldn't hear the
sweet voice as was hers. Where Mr. Reeve
got this bill nobody could tell; most likely
'twas when he went away, for then he
learnt all he knew, just as he wrote it
down: how he followed her abroad, how he
found out that the gentleman ill-used and
left her, and how she died at a place called
Brussels, in a sort of prison-hospital, wasted
to a skeleton and broken-hearted; she that
only six months before was so beautiful and
happy.

"It was a cousin of Mr. Reeve's that come
to him at Hewish farm after he was dead and
gone. Gone, I oughtn't to say—for it was
long before he went; and up to this day
there's some of the old people as will have it
he's to be seen still. The iirst notion there
was about his walking come from one of the
women-servants, who met him close to Pit
Pond one evening at dusk, where he was
looking into the water, after his custom
when he was alive. Then one of the ploughmen
saw him more than once, coming down
one of the furrows, as he went up another;
but he always vanished when he got within
about a team's length. Others saw him night
the barn where he hung himself; and at last
it got so bad that none of the people liked to
stir out alone, or, for that matter, stay on the
farm. The place got a bad name, and it
behoved Mr. Martin, him as succeeded to the
property, to get rid of it, if he did not want
everything to go to rack and ruin.

"  After a good deal of talking amongst the
folks at Hewish, the upshot was to speak to
the clergyman of the parish, and ask him if
he couldn't do something to lay the sperrit.
He wouldn't have nothing to do with it at
first; but in the end he consented, and then,
the thing having got wind, five or six more
clergymen in the parish round about said
they'd join, and so they did. I can't tell how
many people was assembled in the biggest
room in the farm-house, but there was the
clergymen with their prayer-books and
gowns, and there was Mr. and Mrs. Martin,
and the parish clerk of Hewish, and my
father was there, and a many more besides.
The first thing the clergymen done was to
exercise the sperrit — read him up, that is;
and it's as true as you're setten' there, Mr.
Reeve, he come into the room, nobody
couldn't see how or by what entrance.

"He warn't a bit white, like a ghost, as
most of 'em expected, but was dressed just
the way he used to walk about the farm,
only his head was more on one side, bent
down like on his breast, and he guggled in
his talk when he spoke. The clergyman of
Hewish, he asked the sperrit why he hunted
about, and what he wanted; and the sperrit
said it was on account of the trouble his soul
had come to for having hung himself, and he
cleaved to be laid in the Red Sea, to keep
him cool, he was so hot, he said. Then the
clergymen asked him if Pit Pond wouldn't
do; that was always cool, being in a shady
place; and the sperrit, my father said, made
a kind of shudder that went right through
them all; and then he told the clergyman
Pit Pond would do, if so be he was laid there
for a hundred years. So, upon that, all the
clergymen took up their books to pray him
away, and the first words did it; for, no sooner
had they said, ' In the name of the Lord —'
than the sperrit disappeared; but they went
on to the end, and Mr. Reeve's ghost was
never seen no more."

"And so," I observed, after having been so
long a patient listener, " and so you suppose
the spirit was laid in Pit Pond ? "

"You may judge for yourself," replied the
shepherd, " by what I tells you. That pond
in Mr. Reeve's lifetime was as clear as cristal.
The very first evening as he was laid, one of
the hinds, who didn't know nothing about
where the sperrit had been exercised to, driving