Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/215

"Certainly not. Had I been alone I might have doubted—I might have doubted even the evidence of my own senses—I should have been then inclined to believe that I had seen it merely in imagination; but I was not alone: I was with one who had no imagination in him!—pardon the expression—I mean my gardener, whose mind I believe to be as destitute of imagination as it is possible for the mind of a man to be."

"And may I ask, did he see it?" inquired the doctor.

"He did, as distinctly as I saw it myself."

"And had you any proof that it was not flesh and blood?"

"Why I cannot say that I had any actual proof."

"Neither you nor your servant attempted to touch it?"

"No, neither attempted to touch it."

"Did it make any noise as it walked along?"

"Not more than you or I should make without our boots."

"But as much you think?"

"I should say quite as much."

"Then there must, I submit, have been something more than spirit about it."

"I believe not. The noise indeed might have been imaginary; but the appearance of the figure I am satisfied was not."

"Well," said the doctor, "these things are extraordinary: many equally extraordinary things have been accounted for; but as many have occurred for which we cannot account, we must view this as being one of them."

The time had now arrived when the reverend gentleman thought it prudent to depart. He had previously been engaged by the doctor to dine with them on the morrow, but while taking leave of Aunt Eleanor, he promised to call upon her early in the morning.

Almost immediately after he had left, Mrs. Delolme, who was very highly pleased with him, rang the bell for prayers, and when they had been read, Tom and Sylvester retired to the study. James had provided a pound of German sausage for them this time, and a couple of bottles of Burton ale, the whole of which they managed between them, of course!—and when Tom had set the trap again, and placed a piece of string across the window, so that even the slightest touch would bring down a shelf laden with empty bottles, they left the study and retired to rest.

In the morning, Tom, on awaking, found the skeleton by his side. He started, of course, when he saw it first, and opened his eyes and his mouth. There it stood—within a foot of him—pointing directly at him with its right hand, and making a fist of its left.