“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I have seen a goost, just now then.’
“‘A goost?’ they says, ‘a goost? You an’t seen no goost.’
“‘I seen a goost.’
“‘Where a’ you seen a goost?’
“So he telled ’em he seen a goost sitting up in the church poorch.
“‘I shan’t have that,’ says old Mark Turley, for he was a setting here.
“‘I tell you ’twas then,’ says the man.
“‘Can’t be nothing worse’n I be myself,’ Mark says.
“‘I say as ’tis,’ the man said, and he was vexed too. ‘Goo and see for yourself.’
“‘I would goo too and all,’ said old Mark, ‘if only I could walk it, but my rheumatucks be that scrematious I can’t walk it. Goosts! There’s ne’er a mortal man as ever see’d a goost. I’d go, my lad, if my legs ’ud stand it.’ And there was a lot of talk like that until a young sailor spoke up—Irish he was, his name was Pat Crowe, he was on furlough. I dunno what he was a-doing in this part of the world, but there he was and he says to Mark: ‘If you be game enough, I be, and I’ll carry you up to the churchyard on my back.’ A great stropping feller he was. ‘You will?’ says Mark. ‘That I will,’ he says. ‘Well I be game for ’ee,’ says Mark, and so they ups him on to the sailor’s shoulders like a sack o’ corn and away they goos, but not another one there was man enough to goo with them.