THE SPOOK. 
EK came from no one knew where, and he 
arrived no one knew when, but it is 
more than probable that it was under cover 
of night; and what he did, or where he was 
precisely, whether he was alone, or one of 
many, and, more especially, what he was, no 
one knew, and less than nobody cared. To 
sum up, the first and the last that any one 
knew, or guessed, or heard about him was 
when one evening, in the big hay-field that 
rolled away from the ha-ha wall or sunk fence 
round the old churchyard, there began some- 
where, anywhere—oh! just everywhere—a 
sound. 
It was not a loud sound. It was not a 
pretty sound. It was here! No, it was there! 
Where the dickens was it, now? Certainly it 
was somewhere. It was a veritable will-o’-the- 
wisp of a sound, and you couldn’t swear where 
it was. You only knew that it really was, and 
never where you were, but always somewhere 
else—one sound, two sounds, or ten, nobody 
could tell which. In fact, nobody could be 
certain of anything, except that the rising sun 
found it, and the setting sun left it, each day, 
as the hot, long days wore on; and sometimes 
