tensity of his stare. Anthony Turnbull, holding his breath, listened
at the room door. It was a false alarm.

When he came back to the window looking into the yard:

"Hish! Look thar!" said he in a vehement whisper.

From the shadow at the left they saw the figure of the gaunt horseman,
in short cloak and jack-boots, emerge. He pushed open the stable door,
and led out his powerful black horse. He walked it across the front of
the building till he reached the old coach-house door; and there, with
its bridle on its neck, he left it standing, while he stalked to the
yard gate; and, dealing it a kick with his heel, it sprang back with
the rebound, shaking from top to bottom, and stood open. The stranger
returned to the side of his horse; and the door which secured the
corpse of the dead sexton seemed to swing slowly open of itself as he
entered, and returned with the corpse in his arms, and swung it across
the shoulders of the horse, and instantly sprang into the saddle.

"Fire!" shouted Tom, and bang went the blunderbuss with a stunning
crack. A thousand sparrows' wings winnowed through the air from the
thick ivy. The watch-dog yelled a furious bark. There was a strange
ring and whistle in the air. The blunderbuss had burst to shivers
right down to the very breech. The recoil rolled the inn-keeper upon
his back on the floor, and Tom Scales was flung against the side of
the recess of the window, which had saved him from a tumble as
violent. In this position they heard the searing laugh of the
departing horseman, and saw him ride out of the gate with his ghastly
burden.

* * * * *

Perhaps some of my readers, like myself, have heard this story told by
Roger Turnbull, now host of the George and Dragon, the grandson of the
very Tony who then swayed the spigot and keys of that inn, in the
identical kitchen of which the fiend treated so many of the neighbours
to punch.

* * * * *

What infernal object was subserved by the possession of the dead
villain's body, I have not learned. But a very curious story, in which
a vampire resuscitation of Crooke the sexton figures, may throw a
light upon this part of the tale.

The result of Turnbull's shot at the disappearing fiend certainly
justifies old Andrew Moreton's dictum, which is thus expressed in his
curious "History of Apparitions": "I warn rash brands who, pretending
not to fear the devil, are for using the o