en hostess, whom he had discovered to be of
Scottish extraction, and I was conversing with the son-in-law about the
danger of being lost on Cross Fell.

There was a lull in the storm at this time, but one could hear the long
lances of rain striking on the stone tiles above; it was good to be
within doors, and to dry one's coat by the peat embers. We insisted on
our hostess partaking of supper, which we served up to her in bed; then
Sandie and I, the girl and the man, set ourselves down by the table and
stretched forth our hands, in the Homeric phrase, 'to the good things
set before us.'

Sandie and I had our backs to the coffin, and had forgotten all about it
and the 'goodman,' its occupant; Mary and her brother-in-law sat at the
corners of the table, and their features were lit up by the flickering
peats. The man had shifty, furtive eyes, set rather deep beneath an
overhanging forehead, lined cheeks, and a clean-shaven heavy jaw; Mary,
with sallow face, light eyes, and disordered hair sat opposite him,
evidently apprehensive.

A strange party amid strange surroundings, thought I, for a moment, as I
framed an etching of the black coffin, the bright-eyed old woman in the
night mutch abed, the daft girl and dour man and two Oxford
undergraduates eating heartily amid the flickering light of the dip and
the peat flames.

But what a splendid moorland supper it was! Bacon and eggs and fried
potatoes, bannocks with butter, heather honey and milk.

'What luck!' I murmured in Sandie's ear, 'to be hopelessly lost, and to
find this!' and I stretched forth my legs at glorious ease. 'Shifty
eyes' now produced a 'cutty' and suggested a smoke, which Sandie and I
were thinking was the one thing left to complete our satisfaction.
Suddenly and without warning I heard a creak behind my chair, but I took
no heed. Then a further creaking and a grinding noise--and I looked
round. _I saw the coffin-lid lift upward and a white shroud show below._
Slowly the shrouded corpse rose with creaking bones before my staring
eyes--rose to a sitting posture, and sat still. The coffin-lid clanged
to the ground; then all was still, an awful silence filled the room. A
moment more, and a cry of terror rose to the roof, for the man beside me
was down on his knees before the corpse in an ecstasy of terror. 'Never
accuse me, Ephraim! Dinnot terrify us that gate, feyther!' he cried in
anguish. 'Poor Jean just happened an accident--fell and was drowned in
t