158 THE SPOOK. 
about—creatures who did not give away their 
unsuspected presence by sharpening ventrilo- 
quial scythes at unearthly hours of night and 
day. 
Then, on a sudden, the sound ceased as 
mysteriously as it had begun, and with as 
little explanation. Some might argue that 
the maker of it had gone, some that he had 
not. As a matter of fact, he was still there, 
hiding, skulking about. 
Summer, with its long, hot days and quiet, 
bat-haunted nights, passed as summers do— 
almost before one knows it. The hay was 
cut and carried, the corn ripened and was 
carted in golden loads on the heels of the 
hay ; and men said that if there had ever been 
anything there of this world to sharpen a 
scythe, anything tangible, it could not be 
there now, for the fields were as bare as the 
palm of your hand, and not even a spook 
could hide therein. And so the sharpener 
of the scythe was forgotten. 
Nobody thought of the old clover-field, 
though, which was on the other side of the 
churchyard and the ha-ha wall. 
Autumn came, with its wet days, flaming 
colours, and vain regrets, and with it a party 
of sportsmen to shoot the comfy, fat, brown 
partridges. They shot over the hay-field that 
