I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn't like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.
'I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don't know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn't come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,
I couldn't persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which
I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding
among 'em and peeping out.
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