Page:A Thin Ghost and Others.djvu/118

 Didn’t you see? A thing like a man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it?”

‘Well, that was all I could get out of him that time, and later on he seemed as if he was ashamed of being so frightened, and he used to put me off when I asked him about it. But years after, when I was got to be a grown man, we had more talk now and again on the matter, and he always said the same thing. “Black it was,” he’d say, “and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.”

‘Well, that’s the tale of that tomb, Mr. Lake; it’s one we don’t tell to our visitors, and I should be obliged to you not to make any use of it till I’m out of the way. I doubt Mr. Evans’ll feel the same as I do, if you ask him.’

This proved to be the case. But over twenty years have passed by, and the grass is growing over both Worby and Evans; so Mr. Lake felt no difficulty about communicating his notes—taken in 1890—to me. He accompanied them with a sketch of the tomb and a copy of the short inscription on the metal cross which was affixed at the expense of Dr. Lyall to the centre of the northern side. It was from the Vulgate of Isaiah “iv., and consisted merely of the three words—