--

"There's a moon."

"So there is," said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; "and
there's a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of
either of 'em coming down to help a body, whatever happened."

Bill's discomfort had become alarm.

"Why, what could happen?" he asked. "I don't understand you."

His companion whistled, looked up in the air, and kicked vigorously,
but said nothing. Bill was not extraordinarily brave, but he had a
fair amount both of spirit and sense; and having a shrewd suspicion
that Bully Tom was trying to frighten him, he almost made up his mind
to run off then and there. Curiosity, however, and a vague alarm which
he could not throw off, made him stay for a little more information.

"I wish you'd out with it!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "What could
happen? No one ever comes along Yew-lane; and if they did they
wouldn't hurt me."

"I know no one ever comes near it when they can help it," was the
reply; "so, to be sure, you couldn't get set upon. And a pious lad of
your sort wouldn't mind no other kind. Not like ghosts, or anything of
that."

And Bully Tom looked round at his companion; a fact disagreeable from
its rarity.

"I don't believe in ghosts," said Bill, stoutly.

"Of course you don't," sneered his tormentor; "you're too well
educated. Some people does, though. I suppose them that has seen them
does. Some people thinks that murdered men walk. P'raps some people
thinks the man as was murdered in Yew-lane walks."

"What man?" gasped Bill, feeling very chilly down the spine.

"Him that was riding by the cross-roads and dragged into Yew-lane, and
his head cut off and never found, and his body buried in the
churchyard," said Bully Tom, with a rush of superior information;
"and all I know is, if I thought he walked in Yew-lane, or any other
lane, I wouldn't go within five mile of it after dusk--that's all. But
then I'm not book-larned."

The two last statements were true if nothing else was that the man had
said; and after holding up his feet and examining his boots with his
head a-one-side, as if considering their probable efficiency against
flesh and blood, he slid from his perch, and "loafed" slowly up the
street, whistling and kicking the stones as he went along. As to
Beauty Bill, he fled home as fast as his legs would carry him. By the
door stood Bessy, washing some clothes; who turned her pretty face as
he came up.

"You're late, Bill," she said. "Go in an