Shakespeare.
ALTHOUGH two of the burglars engaged in the nocturnal attack on Waverdale Hall had been safely lodged in gaol, the whole region round about seemed to be infested with desperadoes, whose depredations where continually being heard of, and whose outrages, alike on travellers and dwellings, kept that portion of East Yorkshire in a state of perpetual fear. Squire Fuller had not been able to obtain tidings of the missing box, nor had the few and inefficient officers of justice been able to lay hands on any other of these dangerous disturbers of the public peace. To add to the general feeling of insecurity and alarm, the villagers of Nestleton were much exercised by reports to the effect that “Sister Agatha’s ghost,” to which my readers were introduced in the first chapter of these veracious chronicles, had latterly been seen by more than one belated villager who had passed the ruins of the old Priory at the witching hour of night. Jake Olliver, old Adam’s son and foreman on Gregory Houston’s farm, declared that he himself, on his return from certain amatory visits to Cowley Priory, had seen in the silvery moonlight the spirit of the erratic nun, arrayed in flowing robes of white, and with a broad crimson stain upon her breast. He saw her pace with outstretched arms around the ruined walls, and then at a certain crumbling archway, nearly overgrown with thorns and briars, a blue flame enveloped her, and with a wild, weird shriek, she vanished from his sight. He did not hesitate to confess that at the sight of that last phenomenon he took to his heels and ran.
The burly landlord of the Green Dragon, too, had seen the awful apparition. He deposed to two uncanny tenants of the haunted pile; but as he was rather partial to the spirit of malt, it is more than likely that he had an alcoholic gift of second sight, a faculty for “seeing double.” Probably, even out of the mouth of two witnesses, the truth would hardly have been established; but their story was confirmed in its chief particulars by a pillar of the Church, no less a dignitary, indeed, than the parish clerk.
It is not to be wondered at that the resurrection of Sister Agatha, who had for some years forgotten to revisit the glimpses of the moon, became the subject of subdued and anxious conversation at the Green Dragon. There was none of its habitues who dared to cast a doubt upon the story except Piggy Morris. That saturnine ex-farmer had not given up his visits to the bar-room as the result of his late experiences, though it must be acknowledged that they had lately become few and far between. He did not hesitate to call the witnesses a parcel of cowards, and to insinuate with a sneer that the moonlight visitor was nothing more dreadful than Farmer Houston’s white bullock, which he himself had sold to its present owner some few weeks before.
“It’s all nonsense and gammon,” said Piggy Morris, as he pulled away at his pipe in the chimney corner, “I don’t believe in ghosts, an’ them ’at does has got a maggot in their brains, in my opinion.”
At this audacious utterance, the burly Boniface waxed exceeding wroth, and being upheld by several beery supporters, who went in for the ghost, blood-spot, blue-fire, scream and all, he replied,—
“I’ll tell you what it is, Piggy Morris. I don’t mind standing a quart o’ Plymouth gin, if you’ll go at twelve o’clock to-night, and bring a stone from the old Abbey with a bit of carving on it to show that you’ve been there; an’ what’s more, I’ll draw beer enough to keep the company together till you come back again.”
This challenge, and the prospect of a good supply of foaming ale, won the emphatic approval of the assembled topers, who loudly dared Piggy Morris to show the courage of his opinions.