It’s not the first time I have mentioned the man’s cowardice. Believing in ghosts and goblins, wraiths and witches, he could hardly be persuaded to cross Crabb Ravine at night, on account of the light sometimes seen there. Sensible people told him that this light (which, it was true, no one had ever traced to its source) was nothing but a will-o’-the-wisp, an ignis-fatuus arising from the vapour; but Luke could not be brought to reason. On this evening it chanced that the Squire had occasion to send Mackintosh to the Timberdale post-office, and the man had now just come in from the errand.
“I see the light, too, sir,” he was saying to Tod in a scared voice, as he ran his shaking hand through his hair. “It be dodging about on the banks of the Ravine for all the world like a corpse-candle. Well, sir, I didn’t like that, and I got up out of the Ravine as fast as my legs would bring me, and were making straight for home here, with my head down’ards, not wanting to see nothing more, when something dreadful met me. All in white, it was.”
“A man in his shroud, who had left his grave to take a moonlight walk,” said Tod, gravely, biting his lips.
“’Twere in grave-clothes, for sure; a long, white garment, whiter than the snow. I’d not say but it was Daniel Ferrar,” added Luke, in the low dread tones that befitted the dismal subject. “His ghost do walk, you know, sir.”
“And where did his ghost go to?”
“Blest if I saw, sir,” replied Mackintosh, shaking his head. “I’d not have looked after it for all the world. ’Twarn’t a slow pace I come at, over the field, after that, and right inside this here house.”
“Rushing like the wind, I suppose.”
“My heart was all a-throbbing and a-skeering. Mr. Joseph, I hope the Squire won’t send me through the Ravine after dark again! I couldn’t stand it, sir; I’d a’most rather give up my place.”
“You’ll not be fit for this place, or any other, I should say, Mackintosh, if you let this sort of fear run away with your senses,” I put in. “You saw nothing; it was all fancy.”
“Saw nothing!” repeated Mackintosh in the excess of desperation. “Why, Mr. Johnny, I never saw a sight plainer in all my born days. A great, white, awesome apparition it were, that went rushing past me with a wailing sound. I hope you won’t ever have the ill-luck to see such a thing yourself, sir.”