Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/121

 When they had gone about half a mile Jerk looked back and called to the sexton to do the same. Darkness was already creeping over the Marsh, but sharp and black against the skyline—no toy, but real, weird, and convincing—stood Jerk's gibbet.

"What do you think of Lookout Mountain now?" sang out the boy.

"That you can better the name of it, Hangman Jerk. Why not call it Gallows Tree Hill?"

"Why, so I will!" cried the singular youngster. "It's a good name, and so I will—and let's hope as how the tree'll bear fruit."

"As how it won't," muttered the sexton.

"But it will, you can lay to that." Jerk could already picture the schoolmaster hanging there.

As they neared the village, with sudden fear Jerk said to the sexton:

"I suppose the smugglers won't take my gibbet as a personal offence and knock it down?" But the wary Mipps disarmed his fears with:

"There ain't no smugglers, for one thing; 'sides, if there was, how could they knock down wot's knocked up so solid?"

"Well, dig it up, p'raps," suggested Jerk, "'cos, Mister Sexton, it do catch the eye some wot, don't it? Look, you can see it even from here, and it don't look exactly pleasant, do it?"

"Pleasant ain't exactly the word, I agrees, but you