The Argosy — page 386: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

= 364 Watching on St. Mark's Eve. ean ate eyes and laboured breath, like one who has not the power to fly, while the thing advanced. Only when it stopped close and looked at her did the pent-up cries come forth. Then she turned to fly, and the white figure leaped the stile, and went after her into the copse. What immediately followed I cannot remember—never could remember it; but it seemed that not more than a minute had elapsed when I and Molly and Han- nah were standing over Phcebe, lying in convulsions on the ground, and the creature nowhere to be seen. The cries had been heard in the road, and some people passing came running up. They lifted the gurl in their arms, and bore her homewards. My senses were coming to me, showing plainly enough that it was no *‘ shadow,” but some ill-starred individual dressed up to personate one. Poor Phoebe! I could hear her cries still, though the group was already out of the copse and crossing the open field beyond. Somebody touched me on the shoulder. “Tod! Did you do it?” “Do what P” asked Tod, who was out of breath with running. ‘ What was all that row P” I told him. Somebody had made himself into a ghost, with a tied-up whitened face, just as the dead have, and came up the Green Lane in a sheet ; and Phoebe was being carried home in convulsions. ‘You are a fool, Johnny,” was his wrathful answer. ‘I am not one to risk a thing of that sort, not even for those two old women we came out to fnghten. Look here.” He went to the edge of the copse near the road, and showed me some things—the old pistol from the stable, and gunpowder lights that went off with a crash yards high. It’s not of much use going into it now. ‘Tod had meant, standing at a safe distance, to set a light to the explosive articles, and fire off his pistol at the same time. “It would have been so good to see the women scutter off in their fright, Johnny ; and it couldn’t have hurt them. They might have looked upon it as the blue-light from below.” ‘What made you so late ?” “Late !” returned Tod, savagely; “I am late, and the fun’s spoilt. That confounded old Duff and his cane came in to see you, Johnny, just as I was starting ; there was nobody else, and I couldn’t leave him. I said you were a-bed and asleep, but it didn’t send him away. Down he sat, telling a tale of how hard-worked he'd been all day, and asking for brandy-and-water. The dickens take him !” “And, Tod, it was really not you?” “If you repeat that again, Johnny, I’ll strike you. I swear it was not me. There! I never told you a lie yet.” He never had; and from that moment of strong denial I knew that Tod had no more to do with the matter than I had. “I wonder who it could have been ?” f COMIC OOOKS. EO |