56 A TALE OF WONDEK. 



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

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

 'cause if ye don't, old gal, I'll 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 yon- 

 der" (pointing towards the churchyard) ; " that's nothing by 

 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 brother, did, and that's the same, as he was a-coming 

 home just on twelve o'clock, from Farmer Jones' hay -harvest 

 supper. Well, as 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 moni- 

 ment. Plenty, to be sure, had seed them afore ; and there, 

 close by, on old Tomkins' grave, sat Tombstone Tim and that 

 was 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" 



