frank, fearless face answered for her before she spoke.

“Do you think I would remain an instant in the company of any man whom I suspected of such baseness as that?” she asked angrily.

I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out on me in that way. We see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession.

“In that case,” I said, “excuse me if I tell you, in our legal phrase, that you are travelling out of the record. Whatever the consequences may be, Sir Percival has a right to


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pardon, and hold your tongue about the ghost?”

“Eh!—but I saw t’ ghaist,” persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a stare of terror and a burst of tears.

“Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed! What ghost----”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe,” interposed the school-master


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