The Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain | Page 3

arms a-kimbo, evidently smelling the blood of
Englishmen, and wanting to grind people's bones to make his bread.
When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, other
thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from
their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from
the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have
been, and never were, are always wandering.
When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at the fire. When, as it rose
and fell, the shadows went and came. When he took no heed of them,
with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let them go, looked fixedly
at the fire. You should have seen him, then.
When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows, and come out of
their lurking-places at the twilight summons, seemed to make a deeper
stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney,
and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the
old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old
rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy,
high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty
vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that
another quarter of an hour was gone, or the fire collapsed and fell in
with a rattle.
- When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting so, and
roused him.
"Who's that?" said he. "Come in!"
Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his chair; no
face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding footstep touched the
floor, as he lifted up his head, with a start, and spoke. And yet there
was no mirror in the room on whose surface his own form could have
cast its shadow for a moment; and, Something had passed darkly and
gone!
"I'm humbly fearful, sir," said a fresh-coloured busy man, holding the
door open with his foot for the admission of himself and a wooden tray
he carried, and letting it go again by very gentle and careful degrees,
when he and the tray had got in, lest it should close noisily, "that it's a
good bit past the time to-night. But Mrs. William has been taken off her
legs so often" -

"By the wind? Ay! I have heard it rising."
"--By the wind, sir--that it's a mercy she got home at all. Oh dear, yes.
Yes. It was by the wind, Mr. Redlaw. By the wind."
He had, by this time, put down the tray for dinner, and was employed
in lighting the lamp, and spreading a cloth on the table. From this
employment he desisted in a hurry, to stir and feed the fire, and then
resumed it; the lamp he had lighted, and the blaze that rose under his
hand, so quickly changing the appearance of the room, that it seemed as
if the mere coming in of his fresh red face and active manner had made
the pleasant alteration.
"Mrs. William is of course subject at any time, sir, to be taken off her
balance by the elements. She is not formed superior to THAT."
"No," returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, though abruptly.
"No, sir. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by Earth; as for
example, last Sunday week, when sloppy and greasy, and she going out
to tea with her newest sister-in-law, and having a pride in herself, and
wishing to appear perfectly spotless though pedestrian. Mrs. William
may be taken off her balance by Air; as being once over-persuaded by a
friend to try a swing at Peckham Fair, which acted on her constitution
instantly like a steam-boat. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance
by Fire; as on a false alarm of engines at her mother's, when she went
two miles in her nightcap. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance
by Water; as at Battersea, when rowed into the piers by her young
nephew, Charley Swidger junior, aged twelve, which had no idea of
boats whatever. But these are elements. Mrs. William must be taken out
of elements for the strength of HER character to come into play."
As he stopped for a reply, the reply was "Yes," in the same tone as
before.
"Yes, sir. Oh dear, yes!" said Mr. Swidger, still proceeding with his
preparations, and checking them off as he made them. "That's where it
is, sir. That's what I always say myself, sir. Such a many of us
Swidgers!--Pepper. Why there's my father, sir, superannuated keeper
and custodian of this Institution, eighty- seven year old. He's a
Swidger!--Spoon."
"True, William," was the patient and abstracted answer, when he
stopped again.
"Yes, sir,"