“I don’t doubt your word in the least, Uncle Jabez; I assure you I don’t,” Mr. Birchard hastened to say.  “And I’m deeply interested.  I hope you will go on and tell me all your experiences of this kind.  I’ve heard and read a good many ghost-stories; but in all of them the ghosts were malicious creatures, who seemed to come back chiefly for the fun of scaring people out of their wits.  Yours is the first really benevolent and well-meaning ghost of which I have ever heard; and it interests me immensely; for I never could see why a person who was all goodness and generosity while he—­or she—­was alive should turn into an unmitigated nuisance after dying.  I should think, if they must needs come back, they might just as well be pleasant about it and make people glad to see—­or hear—­them.”

“That’s exactly the view I’ve always taken,” said Mr. Crumlish modestly; “and one reason I’ve never felt to doubt any of Uncle Jabez’s stories is that all the ghosts he’s ever seen or heard tell of have been decent-behaving ghosts, that didn’t come back just for the fun of scaring people to death.”

“That’s so; that’s so,” said the old man, entirely mollified, and hearing no note of sarcasm in the schoolmaster’s rapidly-uttered eloquence.  “If any one of ’em was to behave ugly,” he continued, “it would shake my faith in the whole thing considerable; for I couldn’t bring myself to believe that anybody I’ve ever knowed could be so far given over as to want to be ugly after dyin’.”

“Well, now, I don’t know,” said Mr. Dickey argumentatively.  “I hev knowed certain folks that it seems to me would stick to their ugliness alive or dead, and, though I’ve never seen no appearances of any kind, as I may say, I can believe jist as easy that some of ’em come back for mischief as that others come back for good.”

There was a few minutes’ constrained silence after this remark.  Mr. Dickey’s first wife had been what is popularly known as “a Tartar,” and there was a generally current rumor that as the last shovelful of earth was patted down on her grave he had been heard to murmur, “Thanks be to praise, she’s quiet at last.”  The idea of her reappearance in her wonted haunts was indeed a dismaying one, especially as Mr. Dickey had recently married again, and, if the gossips knew anything about it, was repeating much of his former painful experience.  The silence, which was becoming embarrassing, was finally broken by the schoolmaster.

“Had you any more experiences of the kind you have just related, Uncle Jabez?” he asked, in tones of such deep respect and lively interest that Uncle Jabez responded, with gratifying promptness,—­