"You look as if you just saw a ghost," Sarah's mother told her.

Sarah just stared at her with round eyes.

"What happened, sweetheart?"

"Mama, do you remember a man named Thomas?"

Sarah's mother frowned. "Why, I've known several men named Thomas. It's a very common name."

"This Thomas has short brown hair and blue eyes just like mine."

Sarah's mother paled and sank into a chair. How could this be? He was dead now. She had watched him die herself.

"He said he was from the world beyond. He walked through a tree without falling down," Sarah continued.

"Now, Sarah, remember how we talked about the difference between real and make believe?"

"He was real, Mama. I saw him. Honest, I did."

"Is he still there?"

"I don't know. I don't want to go back out there. I'm scared!"

"Did he hurt you, Sarah?"

"No, but he scared me. He said that he's my papa and that he did something bad to you."

Sarah's mother picked the little girl up and held her tightly. She knew that her daughter had a very active imagination, but she also knew that there was no way Sarah could have made all of that up. Sarah's mother was a practical woman who had never believed in ghosts. Yet what other explanation could there be?

Sarah didn't see Thomas again for a long time after that, so long that she almost forgot about him. Almost, but not quite.

The following year Sarah started school in the little village schoolhouse. At recess she talked to a little girl named Letitia.

"My papa is a forest ranger," Letitia told Sarah. "What does your papa do?"

"I don't have a papa," Sarah told her.

"Is he in heaven, then?"

"No. I don't know where he is."

"You must be a bastard, then," Letitia said.

Several nearby children overheard the conversation and joined hands, forming a ring around Sarah.

"Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!" they sang merrily, dancing around Sarah as if they were playing ring-around-the-rosy.

"Leave me alone!" Sarah burst into tears and tried to break through the ring. The teacher arrived and scolded the children who had been teasing Sarah, but the damage had already been done. Sarah wasn't able to hold her head up for the rest of that day.

Thomas was waiting when Sarah returned home from school later.

"I take it your first day of school didn't go very well," he said quietly.

"I told them that I didn't know where you were and they laughed at me and called me a bastard. What's a bastard, Thomas?"

"That simply means that your papa was never married to your mama, but it isn't anything to feel bad about, as it isn't your fault at all. It's mine." Thomas looked so sad that Sarah almost felt sorry for him.

"But you couldn't have married my mama if she was already married," she said.

"When you're a bit older, you'll understand it all," Thomas said softly. "I just hope that when you do, you won't hate me too much. Don't worry about school, Sarah. I promise, tomorrow will be different."

From the window, Sarah's mother watched her daughter and Thomas together, and any doubts she had about the existence of ghosts quickly evaporated and were replaced by a very natural motherly concern. Surely he wouldn't assault a child Sarah's age...She started to go outside and confront him, but before she could open the door, he was gone.

The next day, Thomas visited Sarah's school at recess. Realizing how rare the sight of an adult other than the teacher was at school, the children clamored eagerly around him.

"I'm Sarah's papa," he told them, and then began regaling them with stories of his former life as a courtier and Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Henry VIII. The children were so fascinated that they protested having to return to the schoolhouse, until Thomas quietly disappeared himself, as was his way.

All the children were very nice to Sarah for the rest of the day.

"Thomas came to my school today," Sarah told her mother that afternoon. "Is he truly my papa?"

"Yes," Sarah's mother told her.

"That's why his eyes look just like mine."

Sarah's mother nodded. The situation momentarily forgotten, Sarah happily skipped away to play, as her mother watched her go with a heavy sigh.

She had thought that it was all over. How wrong she had been.