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The young gentlemen got safely home; and Master Arthur gave such a comical account of their adventure, that the Rector laughed too much to scold them, even if he had wished. Beauty Bill went up and down Yew-lane on many a moonlight night after this one, but he never saw another ghost, or felt any more fears in connection with Ephraim Garnett.
The terrors that visit childhood are not the less real and overpowering from being unreasonable; and to excite them is wanton cruelty. Moreover, he was but a little lad, and had been up and down Yew-lane both in daylight and dark without any fears, till Bully Tom's tormenting suggestions had alarmed him.
Bully Tom had spoken the truth when he said that if he thought there was a ghost in Yew-lane he wouldn't go near it. If he had believed the stories with which he had alarmed poor Bill, the lad's evening walk would never have been disturbed, as far as he was concerned.
At a certain point Yew-lane skirted a corner of the churchyard, and was itself crossed by another road, thus forming a "four-want-way," where suicides were buried in times past. This road was the old highroad, where the mail-coach ran, and along which, on such a night as this, a hundred years ago, a horseman rode his last ride.
"Bessy!" he said, "was there a man ever murdered in Yew-lane?" Bessy was occupied with her own thoughts, and did not notice the anxiety of the question. "I believe there was," she answered carelessly, "somewhere about there. It's a hundred years ago or more. There's an old gravestone over him in the churchyard by the wall, with an odd verse on it. They say the parish clerk wrote it.
"And where did we see the ghost?" he inquired in a professional voice, as he took up his coat-tails and warmed himself at the fire. "In Yew-lane, sir; and I'm sure I did see it," said Bill, half crying; "it was all in white, and beckoned me." "That's to say, you saw a white gravestone, or a tree in the moonlight, or one of your classmates dressed up in a table-cloth.
Now, John, as you've come so far, you may as well see the lad home; but don't shake hands with the family in the present state of your fists, or you might throw somebody into a fit. Good-night!" Yew-lane echoed a round of "Good-nights," and Bill and the gardener went off in high spirits.
Lying so till the dawn broke and the cocks began to crow, he would then look cautiously forth, and seeing by the gray light that the corners were empty, and that the figure by the door was not the Yew-lane Ghost, but his mother's faded print dress hanging on a nail, would drop his head and fall wearily asleep.
He avoided the gardens, he was afraid of being seen by his teacher, and though cook had an unusual display of pots and pans in operation, he sat in the corner of the kitchen indifferent to everything but the thought of the Yew-lane Ghost. The dinner for Bessy was put between two saucers, and as cook gave it into his hands she asked kindly after his sister, and added
In the ditch by the side of Yew-lane, shortly after the events I have been describing, a little lad found a large turnip, in which some one had cut eyes, nose and mouth, and put bits of stick for teeth. The turnip was hollow, and inside it was fixed a bit of wax candle.
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