“Who brings the light?”
“It’s more than I can say, sir. They call it here the ghost’s light. And folks say, Master Johnny, that when it’s seen, there’s sure to be some trouble in the air.”
“I think we have trouble enough just now without the light, Luke; and our trouble was with us before we saw that.”
The Ravine lay beneath us, stretching out on either hand, weird, lonesome, dreary, the bottom hidden in gloom. The towering banks, whether we looked down the one we leaned over, or to the other opposite, presented nothing to the eye but darkness: we knew the masses of trees, bushes, underwood were there, but could not see them: and the spot favoured by the restless light was too wild and steep to be safe for the foot of man. Of course it was a curious speculation what it could be.
“Did you ever see the light before, Mackintosh?”
“Yes,” he answered, “half-a-dozen times. Do you mind, Master Johnny, my getting that there bad cut in the leg with my reaping-hook awhile agone? Seven weeks I lay in Worcester Infirmary: they carried me there on a mattress shoved down in the cart.”
“I remember hearing of it. We were at Dyke Manor.”
Before Luke went on, he turned his face to me and dropped his voice to a deeper whisper.
“Master Ludlow, as true as us two be a-standing here, I saw the ghost’s light the very night afore I got the hurt. I was working for Mr. Coney then, it was before I came into the Squire’s service. Young Master Tom, he came out of the kitchen with a letter when we was at our seven-o’clock supper, and said I were to cut off to Timberdale with it and to look sharp, or the letter-box ’ud be shut. So I had to do it, sir, and I came through this here Ravine, a-whistling and a-holding my head down, though I’d rather ha’ went ten mile round. When I got out of it on t’other side, on top of the zigzag, I chanced to look back over the stile, and there I see the light. It were opposite then, on this side, sir, and moving about in the same see-saw way it be now, for I stood and watched it.”
“I wonder you plucked up the courage to stand and watch it, Luke?”