-the dearly loved play-place of generations
of children on sultry summer days--looked very grim and vault-like, with
narrow streaks of moonlight peeping in at rare intervals to make the
darkness to be felt! Moreover, it was really damp and cold, which is not
favorable to courage. At a certain point Yew-lane skirted a corner of
the churchyard, and was itself crossed by another road, thus forming a
"four-want-way," where suicides were buried in times past. This road
was the old highroad, where the mail-coach ran, and along which, on such
a night as this, a hundred years ago, a horseman rode his last ride. As
he passed the church on his fatal journey, did anything warn him how
soon his headless body would be buried beneath its shadow? Bill
wondered. He wondered if he were old or young--what sort of a horse he
rode--whose cruel hands dragged him into the shadow of the yews and slew
him, and where his head was hidden and why. Did the church look just the
same, and the moon shine just as brightly, that night a century ago?
Bully Tom was right. The weathercock and the moon sit still, whatever
happens. The boy watched the gleaming highroad as it lay beyond the dark
aisle of trees, till he fancied he could hear the footfalls of the
solitary horse--and yet no! The sound was not upon the hard road, but
nearer; it was not the clatter of hoofs, but something--and a
rustle--and then Bill's blood seemed to freeze in his veins, as he saw a
white figure, wrapped in what seemed to be a shroud, glide out of the
shadow of the yews and move slowly down the lane. When it reached the
road it paused, raised a long arm warningly towards him for a moment,
and then vanished in the direction of the churchyard.

What would have been the consequence of the intense fright the poor lad
experienced is more than any one can say, if at that moment the church
clock had not begun to strike nine. The familiar sound, close in his
ears, roused him from the first shock, and before it had ceased he
contrived to make a desperate rally of his courage, flew over the road,
and crossed the two fields that now lay between him and home without
looking behind him.

CHAPTER III.

"It was to her a real _grief of heart_, acute, as children's
sorrows often are.

"We beheld this from the opposite windows--and, seen thus
from a little distance, how many of our own and of other
people's sorrows might not seem equally trivial, and equally