5G A TALE OF WONDER. 



Perhaps she really thought so ; but the milkman wouldn't 

 let her rest. "Ah ! but do ye know where he was last nio'ht ? 



V 



'cause if ye don't,, old gal, Til tell ye." 



" Where ?" cried the dame, eagerly clutching at the man's 

 jacket with her skinny hand. 



" Why, may be I'll tell ye, may be I won't," said the young 

 fellow, enjoying her anxiety. " Well, then, he was up 

 yonder" (pointing towards the churchyard) ; "that's nothing In 

 common, to be sure ; but there was something else last night, 

 very particklar besides. I can't say I seed it myself, but Joe, 

 my brothei', did, and that's the same, as lie was a-coming home 

 just on twelve o'clock, from Farmer Jones's hay-harvest supper. 

 Well, .MS he come through the churchyard, he tried (he says) 

 as hard as ever he could to turn his eyes right away from little 

 Sir Timothy and his big wicked wife; but somehow, for all 

 that, he couldn't help seeing them, all in the light of a power 

 of them corpse-candles as dances about the old moniment. 

 Plenty, to be sure, has seed them afore ; and there, close by, 

 on old Tomkins's grave, sat Tombstone Tim and that W.MS 

 nothing out of the common either; but what do you think, 

 dame?" (and here the speaker laid hold of his auditor's 

 shrivelled arm) " what do you think ? a-sitting close aside the 

 little atomy, with one hand on his hump and t'other round his 

 bit of a body, quite fatherly-like, as he used when he was 

 alive, sat old Tomkins hisself, in his brown coat and red hand- 

 kerchief. And now I'll tell ye something else ' 



