Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/126

118 flung his basket after him; but the tale could not be so dismissed. "It may be," thought I, "some one of Pengersick has engaged upon this wickedness on his own account"; and for my Master's credit I resolved to keep watch.

I took therefore the porter into my secret, who agreed to let me through the gate towards midnight without telling a soul. I took a sheepskin with me and a poignard for protection; and for a week, from midnight to dawn, I played sentinel on Cuddan Point, walking to and fro, or stretched under the lee of a rock whence I could not miss any light shown on the headland, if Peter Chynoweth's tale held any truth.

By the eighth trial I had pretty well made up my mind (and without astonishment) that Peter Chynoweth was a liar. But scarcely had I reached my post that night when, turning, I descried a radiance as of a lantern, following me at some fifty paces. On the instant I gripped my poignard and stepped behind a boulder. The light drew nearer, came, and passed me. To my bewilderment it was no lantern, but an open flame, running close along the turf and too low for anyone to be carrying it: nor was the motion that of a light which a man carries. Moreover, though it passed me within half-a-dozen yards and lit up the stone I stood behind, I saw nobody and heard no footstep, though the wind (which was south-westerly) blew from it to me. In this breeze the flame quivered, though not violently but as it were a ball of fire rolling with a flickering crest.