tion continued
with every appearance of civility.

"You come back by Yew-lane, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Why, there's no one lives your way but old Johnson; you must come back
alone?"

"Of course I do," said Bill, beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable.

"It must be dark now before school looses?" was the next inquiry; and
the boy's discomfort increased, he hardly knew why, as he answered--

"There's a moon."

"So there is," said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and there's
a weathercock on the church steeple; but I never heard of either of 'em
coming down to help a body, whatever happened."

Bill's discomfort had become alarm.

"Why, what could happen?" he asked. "I don't understand you."

His companion whistled, looked up in the air, and kicked vigorously, but
said nothing. Bill was not extraordinarily brave, but he had a fair
amount both of spirit and sense; and having a shrewd suspicion that
Bully Tom was trying to frighten him, he almost made up his mind to run
off then and there. Curiosity, however, and a vague alarm which he could
not throw off, made him stay for a little more information.

"I wish you'd out with it!" he exclaimed impatiently. "What could
happen? No one ever comes along Yew-lane; and if they did, they wouldn't
hurt me."

"I know no one ever comes near it when they can help it," was the reply;
"so to be sure you couldn't get set upon; and a pious lad of your sort
wouldn't mind no other kind. Not like ghosts or anything of that."

And Bully Tom looked round at his companion; a fact disagreeable from
its rarity.

"I don't believe in ghosts," said Bill, stoutly.

"Of course you don't," sneered his tormentor; "you're too well educated.
Some people does, though. I suppose them that has seen them does. Some
people thinks that murdered men walk. P'raps some people thinks the man
as was murdered in Yew-lane walks."

"What man?" gasped Bill, feeling very chilly down the spine.

"Him that was riding by the cross roads and dragged into Yew-lane, and
his head cut off and never found, and his body buried in the
churchyard," said Bully Tom, with a rush of superior information; "and
all I know is, if I thought he walked in Yew-lane, or any other lane, I
wouldn't go within five mile of it after dusk--that's all. But then I'm
not book-larned."

The two last statements were true if nothing else was that the man had
said; and after holding up his feet and examining his boots with his
head