“Well, Mr. Garrett,” said Mrs. Simpson, who had not yet resumed her work, and was looking at the fire thoughtfully, “I shall tell you the story. You will please keep it to yourself, if you don't mind? Thank you. Now it is just this. I had an old uncle, a Dr. Rant. Perhaps you may have heard of him. Not that he was a distinguished man, but from the odd way he chose to be buried.”
“I rather think I have seen the name in some guide-book.”
“That would be it,” said Miss Simpson.
“He left directions—horrid old man!—that he was to be put, sitting at a table in his ordinary clothes, in a brick room that he'd had made underground in a field near his house. Of course the country people say he's been seen about there in his old black cloak.”
“Well, dear, I don't know much about such things,” Mrs. Simpson went on, “but anyhow he is dead, these twenty years and more. He was a clergyman, though I'm sure I can't imagine how he got to be one: but he did no duty for the last part of his life, which I think was a good thing;
