Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/319

Rh the path I feel it is unlucky, and I'm sad; and if I see the new moon through glass I'm positively wretched. But all the same, I'm not superstitious. I'm not afraid of ghosts or dead people, or things like that"—I'm not sure that she did not add, "So there!"

"Would you dare to go to the church door at twelve at night and knock three times?" I asked, with some severity.

"Yes," she said stoutly, though I know she quailed, "I would. Now you'll admit that I'm not superstitious."

"Yes," I said, and here I offer no excuse. The devil entered into me, and though I see now what a brute beast I was, I cannot be sorry. "I own that you are not superstitious. How dark it is growing. The ivy has broken the stone away just behind your head: there is quite a large hole in the side of the tomb. No, don't move, there's nothing there. If you were superstitious you might fancy, on a still, dark, sweet evening like this, that the dead man might wake and want to come up out of his coffin. He might crouch under the stone, and then, trying to come out, he might very slowly reach