across.
A's blazin' drunk, I reckon--but 'tisn' _that_--'tis the horrible voice
that goes wi' en--Hark! Lord protect us, he's turn'd into the lane!"

Sure enough, the clatter of a second horse was coming down upon us, out
of the night--and with it the most ghastly sounds that ever creamed a
man's flesh. Farmer Hugo pushed past us and sent a shower of mud in our
faces as his horse leapt off again, and 'way-to-go down the hill. My
father stood up and lashed our old grey with the reins, and down we went
too, bumpity-bump for our lives, the poor beast being taken suddenly
like one possessed. For the screaming behind was like nothing on earth
but the wailing and sobbing of a little child--only tenfold louder.
'Twas just as you'd fancy a baby might wail if his little limbs was
being twisted to death.

At the hill's foot, as you know, a stream crosses the lane--that widens
out there a bit, and narrows again as it goes up t'other side of the
valley. Knowing we must be overtaken further on--for the screams and
clatter seemed at our very backs by this--father jumped out here into
the stream and backed the cart well to one side; and not a second too
soon.

The next moment, like a wind, this thing went by us in the moonlight--
a man upon a black horse that splashed the stream all over us as he
dashed through it and up the hill. 'Twas the scarlet dragoon with his
ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little
shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, 'twas the
shape of a naked babe!

Well, I won't go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the
water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that
moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket.
The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a
decline, and early next fall the old man--for he was an old man now--had
to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held
on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as
soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by that time.

But one cool evening in September month, father was up digging in the
yard alone: for 'twas a small child's grave, and in the loosest soil,
and I was off on a day's work, thatching Farmer Tresidder's stacks.
He was digging away slowly when he heard a rattle at the lych-gate, and
looking over the edge of the grave, saw in the dusk a man hitching