“The cause of his silence was now obvious—he couldn’t speak because he had no mouth; but neither had he eyes, ears, or nose; nothing but that awful, unmeaning, rotund protuberance.
“I stood aghast, too terrified to stir, almost too terrified to breathe, with the hideous Thing looming there before me, and the booming of the river behind. It was a ghastly situation.
“The creature advanced an inch—my blood turned to ice; it raised its arms—my soul sickened within me; it lunged suddenly forward—and—fell right through me. As it did so I heard a fiendish chuckle, which, dying slowly out, gave way to a succession of blood-curdling groans that seemed to proceed from the interior of the ruins. The figure, however, was nowhere to be seen; it must have dematerialised on the spot.
“Very much relieved at this, though still considerably frightened, I was now able to use my limbs, and turning my back on the ghostly building, I felt my way along the bank of the river. I dare not glance at the boiling foam, the very sound of it made my flesh creep; nor did I feel in any degree safe till a winding of the footpath brought me to a bridge, on the opposite side of which I saw the twinkling lights of many houses. I was now, once again, in the land of the living, and a substantial meal by a cosy fire helped, in a good measure, to dissipate my fears and recompense me for all the trials I had undergone.
“Prior to leaving the inn next day I learned from my host that the hollow was known to be haunted, and, on that account, was universally shunned after sunset. Half a century ago the ruins—then a neat grey cottage—had been inhabited by the Evanses, a bad, thriftless ‘lot.’
“At the instigation of her husband, and with the motive of robbery, Mrs. Evans, a buxom woman—handsome in a bad bold style—had flirted openly with a pedlar, known locally as ‘Black Dave.’
“This man was easily induced to put up at their house, and his suspicions being lulled to rest by the amorous overtures of the woman, he was surprised in his sleep and butchered.
“Fearing, however, either to commit the body to the river or bury it in their garden lest it should be found, and being at the time very hard pressed for food—they improvised an oven in the earth and ate it!
“The vengeance of Heaven was, however, close on their track; the cottage, paid for out of their ill-gotten gains, caught fire during a drunken carousal, and Mrs. Evans was burned to death, whilst her husband only lingered long enough to make a full confession of the crime.
“The house was never rebuilt; the phantasm of Dave, in the disgusting guise in which he appeared to me, still haunts the precincts, and, delighting to gull unsuspecting wayfarers, leads them out of their proper courses, guiding them with a fiendish skill to the black ruin—the scene of his ghastly murder.”