Thinking on in this way, I began to think of
the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked
up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his
shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I
sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length
I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there
rang--not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!
'I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It
was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away,
but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had
heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must
be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my
bell--how, or how long, I don't know--and ran home to bed as fast as I
could touch the ground.
'I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story
to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don't
think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale
was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the
cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room
and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
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