The daughter had gone down of her own accord.  “I’n bin very bad with my sparms” meaning spasms, she answered in a plaintive voice.  Valentine saw a very great change in her, the last sunset’s afterglow fell upon her face, it was sunk and hollow, yet she spoke in clear tones, full of complaint, but not feeble.  “And I’n almost done wi’ this world.”

“Mr. Craik comes to see you, I know; he told me to-day that you were ill.”

“Parson were always hard on I.”

“Because he doesn’t believe the ghost story.”

“Ay, told me so this blessed marnin’; and who be he? wanted I to own ’twas a lie, and take the blessed sacrament, and make a good end.  ‘Sir,’ says I, ’Mr. Martimer believed it, that’s Mr. Melcombe now—­and so ’e did, sir.’”

“No, I didn’t,” said Valentine.

“No?” she exclaimed, in a high piping tone.

“No, I say.  I thought you had either invented it—­made it up, I mean—­or else dreamed it.  I do not wish to be hard on you, but I want to remind you how you said you had almost done with this world.”

“Why did ’e goo away, and never tell I what ’e thought?” she interrupted.

Valentine took no notice, but went on.  “And the parson feels uneasy about you, and so do I. I wish you would try to forget what is written down in the book, and try to remember what you really saw; you must have been quite a young girl then.  Well, tell me how you got up very early in the morning, almost before it was light, and tell what you saw, however much it was, or however little; and if you are not quite sure on the whole that you saw anything at all, tell that, and you will have a right to hope that you shall be forgiven.”

“I’n can’t put it in fine words.”

“No, and there is no need.”

“Would ’e believe it, if I told it as true as I could?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I will, then, as I hope to be saved.”

“I mean to stand your friend, whatever you say, and I know how hard it is to own a lie.’

“Ay, that it be, and God knows I’n told a many.”

“Well, I ask you, then, as in the sight of God, is this one of them?”

“No, sir.  It ain’t.”

“What! you did see a ghost?”

“Ay, I did.”

Valentine concealed his disappointment as well as he could, and went on.

“You told me the orchard of pear-trees and cherry-trees was all in blossom, as white as snow.  Now don’t you think, as it was so very early, almost at dawn, that what you saw really might have been a young cherry-tree standing all in white, but that you, being frightened, took it for a ghost?”

“The sperit didn’t walk in white,” she answered; “I never said it was in white.”

“Why, my good woman, you said it was in a shroud!”

“Ay, I told the gentleman when he took it down, the ghost were wrapped up in a cloak, a long cloak, and he said that were a shroud.”