“Lard, I should be frightened to death to try it. Ugh! Fancy standin’ there among the graves all alone in the dark a-waitin’ for a sperret! Maybe ye mightn’t like him when he did come.”
“That’s just what I be a-thinkin’,” said Martha, with a sigh. “But I’d like to find out—it ’ud be a kind o’ satisfaction to know for sure, and not to keep on wonderin’ if it’s to be this one or that one.”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it if I was you,” said the sister.
But Martha was obdurate.
Shortly after the clock struck eleven on the fateful night she crept softly out of the house, and sped noiselessly through the village, and up the lane until she came to the church.
It was a warm, still night, with a large, sultry moon swimming overhead, and outlining with silver the grey walls of the sacred building and the many tombstones which studded the green enclosure round it.
Martha stood still, catching her breath, then tremulously unlatched the gate and went up the flagged path. She paused midway, raising her hand to her head:—
“Did Grandma say ‘In church-porch’ or ‘Nigh to church-porch’? I can’t mind which. The porch do seem to be awful dark—and ’twould be oncommon close inside. There do seem to be scarce room for the sperrets to get past if you was to stand there, without they went through you.”
She shivered: the porch did certainly look uninviting, swathed as it was in awful shadow, and festooned with ivy, tendrils of which stirred every now and then, uncannily as it seemed, for there was no breeze, and the motion was probably caused by some of the many birds that had made homes for themselves in its green fastnesses.
“I reckon it will do just as well if I stop here under tree,” said Martha decisively. “I can see everything what goes in or out, and ’twouldn’t be so far to run if—” she glanced apprehensively at the porch again, measured the distance between it and the gate, and finally, moving swiftly towards the latter, propped it carefully open with a large stone.