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John thought it about time to interfere.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, stepping forward; “but I suppose you really are ghosts?”

“We are unhallowed souls,” answered the dark man impressively, “who return to blight the living with the spectacle of our awful crimes.”

“Meaning me?” asked John.

“Ay, sir; and to destroy you to-night if you contract not, upon your soul, to return with your bride and meet us here a twelvemonth hence.”

“H’m!” said John to himself, “they are three to one; and, after all, it’s what I came for. I suppose,” he added aloud, “some form of document is usual in these cases?”

The dark man drew out pen and parchment.

“Hold forth your hand,” he commanded; and as John held it out, thinking he meant to shake it over the bargain, the fellow drove the pen into his wrist until the blood spurted. “Now sign!”

“Sign!” said the other villain.

“Sign!” said the lady.

“Oh, very well, miss. If you’re in the swindle too, my mind is easier,” said John, and signed his name with a flourish. “But a bargain is a bargain, and what security have I for your part in it?”

“Our signature!” said the priest terribly, at the same moment pressing his branding-iron into John’s ankle. A smell of burnt cork arose as John stooped and clapped his hand over the scorched stocking. When he looked up again his visitors had vanished; and a moment later the strange light, too, died away.

But the coffin remained for evidence that he had not been dreaming. John lit a candle and examined it.

“Just the thing for me,” he exclaimed, finding it to be a mere shell of pine-boards, loosely nailed together and painted black. “I was beginning to shiver.” He knocked the coffin to pieces, crammed them into the fireplace, and very soon had a grand fire blazing, before which he sat and finished his penny-dreadful, and so dropped off into a sound sleep.

The Lord Chamberlain arrived early in the morning, and, finding him stretched there, at first broke into lamentations over the fate of yet another personable young man; but soon changed his tune when John sat up, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded to be told the time.

“But are you really alive? We must drive back and tell his Majesty at once!”

“Stay a moment,” said John. “There’s a brother of mine, a lawyer, in the city. He will be arriving at his office about this time, and you must drive me there; for I have a document here of a sort, and must have it stamped, to be on the safe side.”

So into the city he was driven beside the Lord Chamberlain, and there had his leg stamped and filed for reference; and, having purchased another, was conveyed to the Palace, where the King received him with open arms.

He was now a favoured guest at Court, and had frequent opportunities of seeing and conversing with the Princess, with whom he soon fell deeply in love. But as the months passed and the time drew near for their marriage, he grew silent and thoughtful, for he feared to expose her, even in his company, to the sights he had witnessed in the haunted house.

He thought and thought, until one fine afternoon he snapped his fingers suddenly, and after that went about whistling. A fortnight before the day fixed for the wedding he drove into the city again–but this time to the office of his other brother, the merchant.

“I want,” he said, “a loan of a thousand pounds.”

“Nothing easier,” said his brother. “Here are eight hundred and fifty. Of the remainder I shall keep fifty as interest for the first year at five per cent., and the odd hundred should purchase a premium of insurance for two thousand pounds, which I will retain as security against accidents.”

This seemed not only fair but brotherly. John pocketed his eight hundred and fifty pounds, shook his creditor affectionately by the hand, and hurried westward.