At last a man stepped out from the excited mass, and boldly declared, “Ghost, or no ghost,” he would volunteer to go up to “The Gables,” and arouse its inmates and offer his services to allay the specter. A low rumble of approval greeted this brave declaration, but suddenly a woman darted from the crowd and threw herself upon him. “Thou art daft, mon,” she cried. “Wou’dst thee leave the childer wi’out a faäther, and me a widdy? Let Maister Willin’ tak’ care o’ his spooks, hissen, and thee abide here wi’ we uns. If thou goo’st I’ll never see thee mo’ore.”
“Shut up thine idle croakin’, woman,” rejoined the man, angrily unclasping her clinging arms. “I war a fighter i’ Lancashire, afraid o’ nothin’, an’ wi’ anither gude mon to help, I’ll doon tha spook.”
“I’m with you,” spoke a voice, and a brawny fellow with muscles like iron, and sledge-hammer fists, joined the bragging Englishman.
The crowd watched these two as they slowly climbed the cliff, until the darkness hid their forms, and then in groups of three or four they discussed the probability of their companions’ safe return; while the wife of the Englishman was sobbing bitterly a little way apart, and was looked upon as already a widow, and the two mites clinging to her skirts as orphans.
“I mind Tom Butts, who chased a wild cat into the mountains,” said a woman in a sepulchral whisper, which was plainly heard by “the widow.” “It led him on and on, till finally it turned into a giant man, over seven feet tall, and Tom never come back.”
A prolonged wail from the weeping “widow” stopped further reminiscences, and the woman failed to enlighten her hearers, how it became known if Tom had not returned, that the wild cat had turned into a giant man.
CHAPTER II.
The light still continued to shine from the gabled window. The ghost had not been exorcised as yet, for still the form flitted to and fro, and one man casually remarked “that as ghosts knew everything, it had no doubt been warned of the hostile approach of the Englishman and the brawny blacksmith, and had sent out an evil power to slay them,” and then he facetiously added, “that he wished he had taken his horses to be shod, as he minded to that day. Now the nearest smithy was ten good miles away. Jack would never show up to shoe any more horses.”
Another ear-splitting wail from a gray-haired woman, presumably Jack’s mother, and a chorus of voices crying, “for shame, Joe Bull, to joke over the poor lad. Go away wi’ you for an evil sperrit yoursen’,” caused the would-be joker to slink into the background covered with ignominy.
At last a sound as of returning footsteps down the steep cliff was heard, and a subdued murmur like the hum of bees began to drift through the crowd. Was it Jack and his companion returning? or could it be the evil spirits, who, having destroyed those two brave men, were now bent on wiping out from the land all those who had lent a helping hand toward exposing the ghost of “The Five Gables.”