Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
Page: 18

maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I
once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour. He was alive
and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the
daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood
beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was
slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him
there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched
him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once. As he did
not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder,
as I thought--and there was no such thing.

For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly
statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any
house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning;
and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage
than then.

I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon
my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his
door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the
house.

"Is it haunted?" I asked.

The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, "I say
nothing."

"Then it IS haunted?"

"Well!" cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the
appearance of desperation--"I wouldn't sleep in it."

"Why not?"

"If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to
ring 'em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang
'em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why,
then," said the landlord, "I'd sleep in that house."

"Is anything seen there?"

The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former
appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for "Ikey!"

The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red
face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a
turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with
mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to
be in a fair way--if it were not pruned--of covering his head and