He had on a black skull-cap and spectacles, with sharp eyes looking over them. Bushy white eyebrows, and thin bony hands, with the veins standing out on them."

"The Lord have mercy upon us!" Aldridge was staring with his jaw dropped. "It was Parson Clench himself, and you not knowing! And him buried a fortnight come Wednesday! Lord save us: what is to be done?"

"Come, come, my good man, this is rank nonsense." But Basil was dismayed as well as angry, and a horrid creeping shiver about his scalp might verily have raised his hair had it not been so short-cut. "Mr. Clench is dead and buried. It could not have been Mr. Clench in church."

"It would be him if it was any one at all," the clerk said doggedly. "He was buried in his vestments just as you saw him. I went to the Rectory for a last look before the coffin was closed, so I know. And I daresay you've heard tell how bent he was on preaching to the last, even after he began to fail. He hated letting any one else up into his pulpit, and he wasn't one to change. I'd lay odds a feeling he had in life wouldn't be so much different now. Heaven itself would have a tough job to alter Parson Clench, where he had set his mind; begging your pardon, sir, for speaking free. But to think of him in the church, and seen by you!"

This was a last mutter, as Basil assumed his coat. He said no more to Aldridge in the way of assertion or contradiction, but he went out of the vestry utterly dazed. The church as he glanced round it was empty, except for a girl sorting music at the harmonium—no doubt the "organist" who had officiated at that wheezy instrument: she looked completely undisturbed. Had no one else shared his vision? Basil was of course aware that there were records of such happenings, and that popular interest in them (or curiosity?) had of late years greatly increased; but hitherto he had been indifferent if not sceptical, and utterly unexpectant of any such experience happening to himself. He would fain, even now, have withheld belief, but it was difficult to remain incredulous when he had seen, and had been able minutely to describe, a man who was a stranger to him, with whose appearance in life he was unacquainted, and of whom he had no thought other than indifference in coming to Stoke-St. Edith to fill his place.

He returned to the Hall and the waiting luncheon much perturbed in mind. It was not easy to face aunt Emmeline and her affectionate interest: what did he think of the church, and was it easy to fill (a matter of voice)—also had he a full congregation, and did they appear attentive and interested? He hated himself for giving such half-hearted replies to her enquiries, and was sensitively aware of her disappointment in them; and yet how could he help it and what could he say, wishing as he did that he had never seen the Stoke-St. Edith church, and might never set foot in it again. And a renewal of his ordeal was before him as close at hand as three o'clock, the custom there dictating that the evening service should be read in the afternoon.

Mrs. Albury's catechism did not last long on this occasion, as the butler came to say luncheon awaited him in the dining-room; his aunt had her tiny invalid meal served to her upstairs. "I shall see you again this evening, my dear, and then we will have a, real talk," she said as she dismissed him. Alas! a real talk must mean his acceptance of the Stoke-St. Edith living, or a confession of the barrier of the ghost.

As he walked across to the church, which was situated at no great distance from the Hall, he reflected that perception of this species of appearance, may happen to a man on some isolated occasion, once in a lifetime, never to be repeated again. He might take the duty at Stoke-St. Edith year in and year out, and never again encounter the wraith of the late incumbent, though the fact that he once had done so would be an unforgotten and unforgetable experience. But, despite all reasoning, the ordeal before him made heavy demands upon his courage, and it was a very dour-looking young man who walked into the vestry, and was assisted by Aldridge to robe.

"I can't make out that anybody else saw what you saw, sir, in the church this morning," that functionary whispered. "But I've been told since, there's a talk about in the village that the late rector walks. There are some who met him in the lane when he was on his death-bed, stricken so that he could not move; and one at least who saw him going by, out of her cottage window, the day after he was buried.