“But, Gum, you don’t let me finish.  I woke up with the horror, I tell you—­”

“What horror?” interrupted the clerk, angrily.  “What did it consist of?  I can’t see the horror.”

“Nor can I, very clearly,” acknowledged Mrs. Gum; “but I know it was there.  I woke up with the very words in my ears, ’Don’t let him come to Calne!’ and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he should come.  We are only half awake, you know, at these moments.  I pulled the curtain aside and looked out.  Gum, if ever I thought to drop in my life, I thought it then.  There was but one person to be seen in the road—­and it was Lord Hartledon.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise.  “Come out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!”

“Vault!  I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum.”

Mr. Gum was a little taken back.  They had been so much in the habit of calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster—­who had not lived at Calne since he came into the title—­that he had thought of the old lord when his wife was speaking.

“He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon.  Gum, I nearly dropped, I say.  The next minute he was out of sight; then I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake.”

“And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn’t,” came the mocking retort.

“It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself.”

“Nonsense!  It was just as much one as the other.  The fact is, you hadn’t quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double.  It was just as much young Hartledon as it was me.”

“I never saw a ghost yet, and I don’t fear I ever shall, Gum.  I tell you it was Lord Hartledon.  And if harm doesn’t befall him at Calne, as shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again.”

“There, that’s enough,” peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it was to turn her.  “Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?”

“No:  it never will be, Gum.  I’ve told you so before.  My belief is, and always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste bucket.”

“My belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes,” said the clerk.  “I caught her just now with the door wide open.  She’s trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that’s what she’s at.”

“Oh, Gum!”

“Yes; it’s all very well to say ‘Oh, Gum!’ but if you were below-stairs looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for everyone.  Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next hour.  A fine thing ’twould be some day for us to find her head smothered in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case if any loose characters get in.”