“I’ll go and tackle him,” said Janet at once.  “We can’t lose him.  The work will go to smash.”

She waved a farewell to Ellesborough, and ran back to the house.  The others, watching, saw her emerge on her bicycle and disappear towards the village.

“Well, if anybody can move the old fellow, I suppose it’s Miss Leighton,” said Hastings disconsolately.  “She’s always managed to get the right side of him so far.  But I’m nearly beat, captain!  Things are getting too hard for me.  You can’t say a word to these men—­they’re off in a moment.  And the wages!—­it’s sinful!”

“We’re supposed only to be fighting a war, Hastings,” said Ellesborough with a smile as they walked on together.  “But all the time there’s revolution going on beside it—­all over the world!”

Hastings made a face.

“Right you are, captain.  And how’s it going to work out?”

“Don’t ask me!” laughed Ellesborough—­“we’ve all got to sit tight and hope for the best.  All I know is that the people who work with their hands are going to get a bit of their own back from the people who work with their heads—­or their cheque-books.  And I’m glad of it!  But ghosts are a silly nuisance.  However, I dare say Miss Leighton will get round the old man.”

Hastings looked doubtful.

“I don’t know.  All the talk about the murder has come up again.  They say there’s a grandson come home of the man that was suspected sixty years ago—­John Dempsey.  And some people tell me that this lad had the whole story of the murder from his grandfather—­who confessed it—­only last year, when the man died.”

“Well, if he’s dead all right, and has owned up to it, why on earth does the ghost make a fuss?”

Hastings shook his head.

“People get talking,” he said gloomily.  “And when they get talking, they’ll believe anything—­and see anything.  It’ll be the girls next.”

Ellesborough tried to cheer him, but without much success.  The “poor spirit” of the bailiff was a perpetual astonishment to the American, in the prime of his own life and vigour.  Existence for Hastings was always either drab or a black business.  If the weather was warm, “a bit of cold would ha’ been better”:  if a man recovered from an illness, he’d still got the “bother o’ dyin’ before him.”  He was certain we should lose the war, and the rush of the September victories did not affect him.  And if we didn’t lose it, no matter—­prices and wages would still be enough to ruin us.  Rachel grew impatient under the constant drench of pessimism.  Janet remembered that the man was a delicate man, nearing the sixties, with, as she suspected, but small provision laid up for old age; with an ailing wife; and bearing the marks in body and spirit of years of overwork.  She never missed an opportunity of doing him a kindness; and the consequence was that Hastings, always faithful, even to his worst employers, was passionately faithful to his new mistresses, defending them and fighting for their interests, as they were sometimes hardly inclined to fight for themselves.