“An’, hist!” said she, “I got something t’ tell you,” said she, her eyes flashing, “along about hell.”
“Is you?” I asked, in fear, wishing she had not.
She nodded.
“Is you got t’ tell me, Mary?”
“Davy,” she whispered, pursing her lips, in the pause regarding me with a glance so significant of darkest mystery that against my very will I itched to share the fearful secret, “I got t’.”
“Oh, why?” I still protested.
“I been there!” said she.
’Twas quite enough to entice me beyond my power: after that, I kept watch, all in a shiver of dread, for some signal; and when she had swept her father’s shorn hair from the floor, and when my sister had gone with Tom Tot’s wife to put the swarm of little Tots to bed, and when Tom Tot had entered upon a minute description of the sin at Wayfarer’s Tickle, from which his daughter, fearing sudden death and damnation, had fled, Mary beckoned me to follow: which I did. Without, in the breathless, moonlit night, I found her waiting in a shadow; and she caught me by the wrist, clutching it cruelly, and led me to the deeper shadow and seclusion of a great rock, rising from the path to the flake. ’Twas very still and awesome, there in the dark of that black rock, with the light of the moon lying ghostly white on all the barren world, and the long, low howl of some forsaken dog from time to time disturbing the solemn silence.
I was afraid.
“Davy, lad,” she whispered, bending close, so that she could look into my eyes, which wavered, “is you listenin’?”