CHAPTER XII. 
AT MIDNIGHT. 
yy HE calm light from the waning 
moon, which shone out into the 
night of the 11th of November, 
1873, fell upon a strange scene in 
“the neighbourhood of the little 
* village of Loughton. The village clock 
a had long since struck the eleventh hour, 
| and its hands were slowly but surely ap- 
proaching that mysterious moment 
‘When churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead.’ 
If at this juncture some benighted wayfarer 
had. chanced to find himself in the high street 
of Loughton, he might have thought that the 
ghostly occupants of the churchyard on the night 
