crossed the
road; and as he drew near he beheld--on the margin of this brook, and
in the dark shadow of the grove--he beheld something huge, misshapen,
black, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the
gloom like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.

He demanded, in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He received no
reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still
there was no answer. And then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in
motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood in the middle of the
road. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions and mounted on a
black horse of powerful frame. Having no relish for this strange
midnight companion, Cosmo Waynflete urged on his steed in hopes of
leaving the apparition behind; but the stranger quickened his horse
also to an equal pace. And when the first horseman pulled up, thinking
to lag behind, the second did likewise. There was something in the
moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was
mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On
mounting a rising ground which brought the figure of his
fellow-traveller against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a
cloak, he was horror-struck to discover the stranger was headless!--but
his horror was still more increased in observing that the head which
should have rested on the shoulders was carried before the body on the
pommel of the saddle.

The terror of Cosmo Waynflete rose to desperation, and he spurred his
steed suddenly in the hope of giving his weird companion the slip. But
the headless horseman started full jump with him. His own horse, as
though possessed by a demon, plunged headlong down the hill. He could
hear, however, the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he
even fancied that he felt the hot breath of the pursuer. When he
ventured at last to cast a look behind, he saw the goblin rising in the
stirrups, and in the very act of hurling at him the grisly head. He
fell out of the saddle to the ground; and the black steed and the
goblin rider passed by him like a whirlwind.

VI

How long he lay there by the roadside, stunned and motionless, he could
not guess; but when he came to himself at last the sun was already high
in the heavens. He discovered himself to be reclining on the tall grass
of a pleasant graveyard which surrounded a tiny country church in the
outskirts of a pretty little vill