I will not go back again, though I be shot for it. I have seen him.”
“Him — and who is him?”
“Him! Why Captain Percival. He came close up to me, and pointed to a man in the burial-ground next to his own.”
The Captain had died about a month previously, and Tim, who was very much attached to him — and indeed everybody in the regiment was — had grieved very much about his death. He had acted as the Captain’s servant, and had received many favors at his hand, and poor Tim was a grateful creature.
“It’s all nonsense, Tim,” said I. “Go back to your post, and in reporting you I’ll make the best case out that I can for you.”
“Never!” said Tim, “if I be shot for it.”
To break the ice as luck would have it, the doctor happened to drop in at this moment, and learning the circumstances that had induced Tim to leave his post, questioned him fully on the subject. But he felt Tim’s pulse first, and there came over his face an expression that I noticed, but that Tim did not, which said very plainly to me that he did not like the beat of it. Tim was confident that he had seen Captain Percival, and that the Captain pointed out the grave which a man was digging alongside of his own, and had distinctly told him that he was to be buried there as soon as the grave was quite ready.
“And you saw the man digging the grave?” asked the doctor.
“Distinctly,” replied Tim; “and you can see him too, if you go immediately.”
“Do, you go, sergeant,” said the doctor to me, “and I’ll sit with O’Loghlin till you return. I think you had better detail another sentry in his place. Is there any brandy to be got? But stay; it does not matter. I have a flask. And O’Loghlin, my man, you must have a pull at it; it is medicine, you know, and I order it.”
Tim was taking a pull at the flask as I went out. I thought it possible enough that the grave-digger might be at work, but I did not know what to say about the Captain, except to think, perhaps, that Tim had been dreaming, and fancied he saw things that had no existence. I got into the burial-ground without difficulty — the gate was not fastened — and went straight to the grave of Captain Percival. There stood the gravestone, sure enough, with the Captain’s name, age and date of death upon it, and a short story besides, setting forth what a good and brave fellow he was, which was true as the gospel. — But there was no grave-digger there, nor no open grave, as Tim had fancied. I went back, and found Tim and the doctor together, Tim not looking quite so wild and white as before, but bad and ill, all the same.
“Well,” inquired the doctor.
“Well,” I replied. “There’s nothing to be seen. It’s just as I thought. Poor Tim’s fancy has cheated him, and it’s my opinion the poor boy is not well at all. And what am I to do about reporting him?”
“You must report him, of course,” said the doctor; “but I don’t think much harm will come to him of that.
O’Loghlin, you must go into the hospital for a day or two, and I will give you some stuff that will bring you out again right as a trivet, and you will see no more ghosts.”
Tim shook his head, and was taken quietly to the hospital, and put to bed. The brandy had done him good; whether it was all brandy, or whether there wasn’t a drop of sleeping stuff in it, I can’t say, but it’s very likely there was, for the doctor told me the longer he slept in reason the better it would be for him. And Tim had a long sleep, but not a very quiet one, for all that same, and tossed about for the matter of a dozen hours or so. But he never got out of bed again. When I saw him at noon the next day he was wide awake, and very feverish and excitable.
“How are you, Tim, my poor fellow?” said I, taking his hand, which was very hot and moist.
“I’ve seen him again,” he replied. “I see him now. He is sitting at the foot of the bed, and pointing to the graveyard. I know what he means.”
“Tim, it’s crazy that ye are,” said I.
He shook his head mournfully.
“Monaghan,” he sighed, rather than said, “ye’ve been a kind friend to me. Give that to the little girl in Ireland — you know.” And he drew a photographic portrait of himself from under his pillow, tied round with a blue ribbon, from which depended a crooked six pence with a hole in it. “In a few days ye’ll be laying me in the ground alongside of the Captain. Do ye see him now! He is leaving the room smiling upon me, and still pointing to the graveyard. I am no longer afraid of him. He means me no harm, and it is no blame to him if he is sent to tell me to get ready.”
“Tim, you are cheating yourself. What you are telling me is all a walking dream. I can see no ghost.”
“Of course, you can’t,” said Tim. “The spirits never appear to two persons at once. But Patrick Monaghan,” he added, “let us talk no more on the subject, but send Father Riley to me, that I may unburden me soul, and die in peace.”
“It would have been cruel to me to have argued the matter with the poor afflicted creature, and him such a friend of my own, too, so I left him to go in search of the doctor first, and of Father Riley afterwards. They both came. What passed between Tim and the Holy Father, of course, I never knew; but the doctor told me distinctly. Tim was in a very bad way — stomach was wrong, the nerves wrong, the brain was wrong; in fact, he was wrong altogether, and had a fever which the doctor called by a very grand and night-sounding name, which I did not hear very plainly, and which if I did, I am unable to remember. Tim survived three days after this, sleeping and dozing, and talking in his sleep, and every now and then saying amid words which I could not well put together into any meaning, “I am coming, I am coming.” Just before he died, he grew more collected, and made me promise that he should be buried in the grave that had been dug for him by the side of the Captain. I knew that no such grave had been dug as he said, and that it was all a delusion; but what was the use of arguing with a dying man? So I promised, of course, by my honor and by my soul, to do all I could to have his last wish gratified. The doctor promised also and so did Father Riley, and I think poor Tim died happy. His last words were something about the ribbon and the crooked six pence, and the Captain, the very last syllable being, “I come.”
“We buried the poor lad in the place assigned by himself, and I was so affected altogether by the sadness of the thing that I could have persuaded myself, in fact I did persuade myself, that I saw Captain Percival in undress or fatigue uniform, just as he had appeared to poor Tim walking past the sentry-fox before the door of the Government House, and stopping every now and then to point at the grave; and the more I closed my eyes to avoid seeing him, the more permanently and clearly he stood before me.”
“And are you in any doubt on the subject now?” I inquired.
“And indeed I am,” replied the sergeant, shaking the ashes from his cigar with the tip of his little finger. “Tim must have seen the ghost, and must have believed in him, and if I only saw it, after Tim’s death, it is but another proof of what almost everybody knows, that two people never saw the same ghost at the same time. And ghost or no ghost, it is quite clear that Tim died of him, and might have been alive at this moment, but for the ghost’s extraordinary behavior. But it’s one of the questions that all the talk in the world can’t settle.”
“Do you think Tim would have seen the ghost of Captain Percival, or anybody else, if he had been sound in mind and limb, if he had been a strong hearty man with a good appetite, and an undisordered stomach?”
“Can’t
