“Whose ghost?” returned Lionel.

Dan hesitated.  He stood first on one leg, then on the other.

“Please, sir, ’twarn’t Rachel’s,” said he, presently.

“Whose then?” repeated Lionel.

“Please, sir, mother said I warn’t to tell you.  Roy, he said, if I told it to anybody, I should be took and hanged.”

“But I say that you are to tell me,” said Lionel.  And his pleasant tone, combined, perhaps, with the fact that he was Mr. Verner, effected more with Dan Duff than his mother’s sharp tone or Roy’s threatening one.

“Please, sir,” glancing round to make sure that his mother was not within hearing, “’twere Mr. Fred Massingbird’s.  They can’t talk me out on’t, sir.  I see’d the porkypine as plain as I see’d him.  He were—­”

Dan brought his information to a summary standstill.  Bustling down the stairs was that revered mother.  She came in, curtseying fifty times to Lionel.  “What could she have the honour of serving him with?” He was leaning over the counter, and she concluded he had come to patronise the shop.

Lionel laughed.  “I am a profitless customer, I believe, Mrs. Duff.  I was only talking to Dan.”

Dan sidled off to the street door.  Once there, he took to his heels, out of harm’s way.  Mr. Verner might begin telling his mother more particulars, and it was as well to be at a safe distance.

Lionel, however, had no intention to betray trust.  He stood chatting a few minutes with Mrs. Duff.  He and Mrs. Duff had been great friends when he was an Eton boy; many a time had he ransacked her shop over for flies and gut and other fishing tackle, a supply of which Mrs. Duff professed to keep.  She listened to him with a somewhat preoccupied manner; in point of fact, she was debating a question with herself.

“Sir,” said she, rubbing her hands nervously one over the other, “I should like to make bold to ask a favour of you.  But I don’t know how it might be took.  I’m fearful it might be took as a cause of offence.”

“Not by me.  What is it?”

“It’s a delicate thing, sir, to have to ask about,” resumed she.  “And I shouldn’t venture, sir, to speak to you, but that I’m so put to it, and that I’ve got it in my head it’s through the fault of the servants.”

She spoke with evident reluctance.  Lionel, he scarcely knew why, leaped to the conclusion that she was about to say something regarding the subject then agitating Deerham—­the ghost of Frederick Massingbird.  Unconsciously to himself, the pleasant manner changed to one of constraint.

“Say what you have to say, Mrs. Duff.”

“Well, sir—­but I’m sure I beg a hundred thousand pardings for mentioning of it—­it’s about the bill,” she answered, lowering her voice.  “If I could be paid, sir, it ’ud be the greatest help to me.  I don’t know hardly how to keep on.”

No revelation touching the ghost could have given Lionel the surprise imparted by these ambiguous words.  But his constraint was gone.