The Argosy — page 153: what you’re looking at

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

140 Lhe Grey Cottage. ‘Nothing particular. Why? What is there to hear?” ‘Perhaps I ought not to tell it you, ma’am; you might be scared,” returned she, as she looked at me over the kettle. “Scared! NotI. Pray tell what you have to tell—if it concerns the cottage.” ‘Well, ma’am, it’s a healthy place and a pretty place ; that’s for sure. But—it’s about the old gentleman.” ‘“ The old gentleman !” ‘“Old Mr. Vallyer. ‘They say he is in the house.” ‘‘ Why, what do you mean?” I asked, feeling somewhat as the woman had said—scared. ‘“‘Tt’s said, ma’am, that he never went out of it, though his funeral did; that he stopped in to haunt it. Folks talk of something that happened here years and years ago; some friend of Mr. Vallyer’s came from over the seas to visit him. ‘They used to quarrel, and one night the stranger was found dead in the garden. Some thought the death didn’t come about by accident; that Vallyer knew more than he said. Anyway, it’s pretty sure he can’t rest now, but is about the place troubling it.” I am not especially superstitious, but I confess I did not like the tale. Mrs. Briggs continued. Her tongue, once oiled, would have gone on for ever. ‘The first to see him was the Widow Munn’s children ; he had been dead about a month. I was at her place, helping her with a day’s washing. ‘ Mother,’ said they, running in at dusk, ‘ we have seen the old gentleman at the Grey Cottage; he’s leaning over the gate with his stick just as he used to be.’ They weren’t frightened, those young children; they told it as a bit of news. The Widow Munn looked at me, and I at her, and then she whipped ’em all round, thinking it might be the best way to put it out of their heads.” I laughed ; and said the children might have been mistaken. “So they might, ma’am,” assented Mrs. Briggs. ‘‘ The next to see it was a stranger: a young man coming through the village one moonlight night on his way to London; he was walking it. He went into the public-house, down there in Greenford, and called for a glass of ale. While he was sitting by the fire drinking it, he began to talk. ‘What uncivil people you seem to have in these parts,’ says he. ‘I asked an old gentleman, standing at his garden- gate half way up the hill, whether there was a public-house near, and he would not answer me; he just stared straight in my face with his glassy-looking eyes, and never spoke.’ The company in the tap-room stopped talking at this, and looked at one another. ‘What sort of an old gentleman was it,’ they asked; ‘how was he dressed ?’ ‘*“ He wore a long grey coat, with a curious little cape to it,’ says the traveller, ‘and a spotted white kerchief, tied loose round his neck, with the ends hanging, and he had a stick in his hand. Véery civil, CORnNIELOOKS (E(0)