“What’s the matter, Tim?” Ned asked, laughing. “Why, you look as if you had seen a dozen ghosts on the road.”

“So I have, Master Edward, more than a dozen.”

“More than a dozen ghosts, lad?” asked the knight, laughing. “Did you bring the letters safe?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Tim; “here they are, sir; but I had to ride for my dear life like the devil.”

“What does the lad mean?” the knight asked. “Surely he is not crazy? Sit down and compose yourself.”

“Well, sir,” said Tim, “directly I got the letters I started back home again; but as I was trotting along I saw a man on horseback waiting for me; he looked like a highway robber, so I turns my horse down another road to get out of his way.”

“Well, what then?”

“I hadn’t gone far, sir, and was just passing the Red Man’s gibbet, as they calls it, at the cross roads, when the wind began to howl and cry like so many living voices.”

“You were not afraid of all that, I hope?”

“No, sir, but the vultures were flying about the gibbet, and their eyes sparkled in the moonlight like so many coals of fire.”

“Well?”

“I didn’t care much about that, but when I got fairly under the gibbet, and was about to pass by, I looked up, and I saw the Red Man’s eyes glaring on me, and he seemed to shake himself, for his chains rattled awfully.”

“Nonsense! he has been dead this many a-year; it was all fancy, Tim,” said Wildfire Ned, chuckling.

“No, it wasn’t, sir, all due respect to you, sir; he was alive.”

“Alive?”

“Aye, gentlemen, alive; I could swear it as sure as I live.”

“You were timorous, that is all, and fancied so.”

“No, Sir Richard, I never was so brave in all my life, although I felt my blood run cold. It spoke to me.”

“Spoke to you?”

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