Told After Supper | Page 9

up a little mound at the bottom of the
orchard with a tombstone over it, bearing the following inscription:-

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF EMILY HER LAST WORDS
WERE - "TELL JOHNSON I LOVE HIM"
"That ought to fetch him," mused the Dad as he surveyed the work
when finished. "I am sure I hope it does."
It did!
We lured him down there that very night; and--well, there, it was one of
the most pathetic things I have ever seen, the way Johnson sprang upon
that tombstone and wept. Dad and old Squibbins, the gardener, cried
like children when they saw it.
Johnson has never troubled us any more in the house since then. It
spends every night now, sobbing on the grave, and seems quite happy.
"There still?" Oh yes. I'll take you fellows down and show you it, next
time you come to our place: 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. are its general hours, 10
to 2 on Saturdays.

INTERLUDE--THE DOCTOR'S STORY

It made me cry very much, that story, young Biffles told it with so
much feeling. We were all a little thoughtful after it, and I noticed even
the old Doctor covertly wipe away a tear. Uncle John brewed another
bowl of punch, however, and we gradually grew more resigned.
The Doctor, indeed, after a while became almost cheerful, and told us
about the ghost of one of his patients.
I cannot give you his story. I wish I could. They all said afterwards that
it was the best of the lot--the most ghastly and terrible--but I could not
make any sense of it myself. It seemed so incomplete.
He began all right and then something seemed to happen, and then he
was finishing it. I cannot make out what he did with the middle of the
story.
It ended up, I know, however, with somebody finding something; and
that put Mr. Coombes in mind of a very curious affair that took place at
an old Mill, once kept by his brother-in-law.
Mr. Coombes said he would tell us his story, and before anybody could
stop him, he had begun.
Mr Coombes said the story was called -
THE HAUNTED MILL OR THE RUINED HOME (Mr. Coombes's
Story)

Well, you all know my brother-in-law, Mr. Parkins (began Mr.
Coombes, taking the long clay pipe from his mouth, and putting it
behind his ear: we did not know his brother-in-law, but we said we did,
so as to save time), and you know of course that he once took a lease of
an old Mill in Surrey, and went to live there.
Now you must know that, years ago, this very mill had been occupied
by a wicked old miser, who died there, leaving--so it was rumoured-
-all his money hidden somewhere about the place. Naturally enough,
every one who had since come to live at the mill had tried to find the
treasure; but none had ever succeeded, and the local wiseacres said that
nobody ever would, unless the ghost of the miserly miller should, one
day, take a fancy to one of the tenants, and disclose to him the secret of
the hiding-place.
My brother-in-law did not attach much importance to the story,
regarding it as an old woman's tale, and, unlike his predecessors, made
no attempt whatever to discover the hidden gold.
"Unless business was very different then from what it is now," said my
brother-in-law, "I don't see how a miller could very well have saved
anything, however much of a miser he might have been: at all events,
not enough to make it worth the trouble of looking for it."
Still, he could not altogether get rid of the idea of that treasure.
One night he went to bed. There was nothing very extraordinary about
that, I admit. He often did go to bed of a night. What WAS remarkable,
however, was that exactly as the clock of the village church chimed the
last stroke of twelve, my brother-in-law woke up with a start, and felt
himself quite unable to go to sleep again.
Joe (his Christian name was Joe) sat up in bed, and looked around.
At the foot of the bed something stood very still, wrapped in shadow.
It moved into the moonlight, and then my brother-in-law saw that it
was the figure of a wizened little old man, in knee-breeches and a
pig-tail.
In an instant the story of the hidden treasure and the old miser flashed
across his mind.
"He's come to show me where it's hid," thought my brother-in-law; and
he resolved that he would not spend all this money on himself, but
would devote a small percentage of it towards doing good to others.
The apparition moved towards the door: my brother-in-law put on his

trousers