"That's not a trick," he thought: "no one would think it worth while
to play a trick, certain of being without an audience either to see or
hear it. I question even if it is the abbot himself; or if he likes to
air himself there in the middle of a winter night, he must be too hot
at home, if not too dull."
A filmy mantle of pale white vapor is surely a more likely garment for
a spirit to snatch up and wrap round him when about to indulge in an
earthly tour than the conventional and traditionary white sheet:
in point of fact, for the sheet he must wait till he arrives in our
world, and when he does arrive he must of necessity help himself to
it; which I, for one, should be sorry to think any well-conditioned
ghost would do; but light, pale shadowy light, lying about everywhere
for the picking up, what so suitable as raiment for a being who has
nothing to wear?
It could not but occur to Edwin, Had the abbot come back to his old
haunt on some errand? Had he a benevolent ghostly interest in its
present inhabitants? Here was a work in which even a spirit of mark
might engage without loss of dignity and with perfect propriety. He
might turn tables on the perverse circumstances that kept two young
people separate; and if marriages are made in heaven, an angel need
not despise such a mission as making two lovers happy.
"Well" thought Edwin, "if you are Abbot John, how do you like to see
the dear old stones of your monastery built into dykes? or would you
have preferred seeing them applied to villa purposes?" If it were
the abbot, Edwin felt he would like to have that familiar kind of
intercourse with him which in our country is known as twa-handed
crack; and if it were not the abbot, he had a wonderful curiosity to
know what it was--to have it accounted for.
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