“So they goos together one dark night, ’long in November it was, and well you knows, all of you, as well as I, that nobody can’t ever see over our churchyard wall by day let alone on a dark night. You all knows that, don’t you?” asserted the thatcher, who appeared to lay some stress upon this point in his narrative. There were murmurs of acquiescence by all except the mild-faced man, and the thatcher continued: “‘Twere about nine o’clock when they dug out the earth. ’Twarn’t a very hard job, for Henry was only just a little way down. He was buried on top of his old woman, and she was on top of her two daughters. But when they got down to the coffin Impey didn’t much care for that part of the job, he felt a little bit sick, so he gives the hammer and the screwdriver to Levi and he says: ’Levi,’ he says, ‘are you game to make a good job o’ this?’
“‘Yes, I be,’ says old Levi.
“‘Well, then,’ Impey says, ‘yous’ll have my smock on now while I just creeps off to old Wannaker’s sheep and collars one of they fat lambs over by the 'lotments.’
“‘You’re not going to leave me here,’ says Carter, ‘what be I going to do?’
“‘You go on and finish this ’ere job, Levi,’ he says, ‘you get the money and put back all the earth and don’t stir out of the yard afore I comes or I’ll have yer blood.’
“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘you maun do that.’
“‘I ’ull do that,’ Impey says, ‘he’ve got some smartish lambs I can tell ’ee, fat as snails.’
“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘I waun’t have no truck wi’ that, tain’t right.’
“‘You will,’ says Impey, ‘and I ’ull get the sheep. Here’s my smock. I’ll meet ’ee here again in ten minutes. I’ll have that lamb if I ’as to cut his blasted head off.’ And he rooshed away before Levi could stop him. So Carter putts on the smock and finishes the job. He got the money and putt the earth back on poor Henry and tidied it up, and then he went and sat in the church poorch waiting for this Impey to come back. Just as he did that an oldish man passed by the gate. He was coming to this very place for a drop o’ drink and he sees old Levi’s white figure sitting in the church poorch and it frittened him so that he took to his heels and tore along to this very room we be sittin’ in now—only 'twas thirty years ago.
“‘What in the name of God’s the matter wi’ you?‘ they says to him, for he’d a face like chalk and his lips was blue as a whetstone. ’Have you seen a goost?’