e
gospel--it _is_--actually!"

"No! but were't _really_ so?" inquired Dickons--several of the others
taking their pipes out of their mouths, and looking earnestly at
Pumpkin.

"I didn't half like it, I can tell you," quoth Pumpkin.

"Ha, ha, ha!--ha, ha!" laughed the gamekeeper--

"Ay, marry, you may laugh," quoth Pumpkin, "but I'll stake half-a-gallon
o' ale you daren't go by yourself to the cottage where she's
lying--_now_, mind--i' the dark."

"_I'll_ do it," quoth Higgs, eagerly, preparing to lay down his pipe.

"No, no--_thou'rt_ quite used to dead folk--'tis quite in thy line!"
replied Pumpkin--and, after a little faint drollery, silence ensued for
some moments.

"Bess dropped off sudden like, at the last, didn't she?" inquired the
landlord.

"She went out, as, they say, like the snuff of a candle," replied
Jobbins, one of the farmers; "no one were with her but my Missis at the
time. The night afore, she had took to the rattles all of a sudden. My
Sall (that's _done for_ her, this long time, by Madam's orders,) says
old Bess were a good deal shaken by a chap from London, which cam' down
about a week afore Christmas."

"Ay, ay," quoth one, "I've heard o' that--what was it?--what passed
atwixt them?"

"Why, a' don't well know--but he seemed to know summat about t'ould
girl's connections, and he had a book, and wrote down something, and he
axed her, so Sall do tell me, such a many things about old people, and
things that are long gone by!"

"What were the use on't?" inquired Dickons; "for Bess hath been silly
this ten years, to my sartin knowledge."

"Why, a' couldn't tell. He seemed very 'quisitive, too, about t'ould
creature's Bible and prayer-book (she kept them in that ould bag of
hers)--and Sall said she had talked a good deal to the chap in her
mumbling way, and seemed to know some folk he asked her about. And Sall
saith she hath been, in a manner, dismal ever since, and often a-crying
and talking to herself."

"I've heard," said the landlord, "that squire and parson were wi' her on
Christmas-day--and that she talked a deal o' strange things, and that
the squire did seem, as it were, _struck_ a little, you know--struck,
like!"

"Why, so my Sall do say; but it may be all her own head," replied
Jobbins.

Here a pause took place.

"Madam," said the sexton, "hath given orders for an uncommon decent
burying to-morrow."

"Well, a' never thought any wrong of ould Bess, for my part," said
one-