“Is this Davy?” said I.

“Yes,” said he.

“Then go back to your young woman and comfort her,” I said, which he did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one’s arms, but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost hadn’t gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn, so they came back to the fork to wait for me.  But I had been closer behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very carefully.  After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and they went on faster.

They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him.  This was Davy; and when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told them that a dreadful thing had come to pass.  He had been working in the garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by the hair.  He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn’t abide spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.

Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.

Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not killed, and Jone didn’t say much, but I could see that his teeth was grinding.

We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle, jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we found it was not hurt a bit.  Davy and his young woman was standing in the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him what it was that had scared him.  As we was going through the house, Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.

“Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost,” said I, “I hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your young man will be married all right.”