The gamekeeper, perhaps, believes less in ghosts than other countrymen.
He is not afraid to keep vigil in the loneliest wood, though well known
to be haunted by a headless spectre. He carries a gun and his dog is
at heel, so it may be that the ghosts are afraid of the keeper. We
know a house where great alarm was caused by the ghostly ringing of
bells. Watches were set, and one watcher after another made report of
a flitting figure, clad in white, that roamed the corridors. At last
the keeper was called in to deal with the ghost. He took up his watch,
his trusty gun, loaded with buckshot, in his hand. "There I bid," he
relates, "till jest on twelve o'clock--when all of a sudden the old
baize door at the end of the stone passage opens, of its own accord
like, and in slips the ghost. I ups wi' m' gun, and I sez, 'Be you the
ghost?' sez I. 'And if ye moves,' sez I, 'I shoots.' Three times I
speaks, gruffer and gruffer each time. And then I makes a rush for the
ghost--wot turns out arter all to be Mary the 'ouse-maid." "What did
you do with Mary?" we asked the story-teller. "Lor' love ye, I took and
married 'er out o' the way."
This same keeper let us into the secret of his shattered faith in
ghosts. As a young man he and a fellow under-keeper had been told off
to watch the carriage-drive for night poachers. In a jocular moment the
head-keeper warned them not to be afraid if they should see the estate
ghost--the headless body of an old coachman driving a pair of galloping
horses harnessed to a hearse. Naturally, the two young keepers, as
the night wore on, fell to talking about the headless apparition.
Presently, sure enough, hoofs were heard, and a hearse came lumbering
down the drive. The watchers crouched low in the heap of dead bracken
in which they were hidden. Asked, an hour later, if they had seen the
poachers, "No," they said bravely; "we only saw the old fellow without
a head, driving his hearse." "Well," said the head-keeper, chuckling,
"if you'd looked inside his hearse you would have found it full of
corpses--rabbits' corpses! Me and Bill, we ketched the ghost, whiles he
was drinking your 'ealth."
* * * * *