"No interfering!" exclaimed Mr. Gibbs. "You've forfeited. Here's your glass, Master Cudlip. Go on."
"There's not much more to be said," continued the yeoman. "One or two more arms came on, and granfer said there was a sight o' difference in their ways: some was pushing like, and forward; and others rayther hung back, and seemed to consider small bones of themselves. Now it was a fact that all those he saw and named belonged to folks as died within the year, and in the very order in which they came on and presented themselves before him. What puzzled him most to name was two baby-arms—purty little things they was—and he had to count over all the young children in the parish before he could tell which they was. At last, up came a long, lean, old, dry arm, tossing its hand in a short, quick, touchy fashion, and went up on grandfer's knee without so much as a 'By your leave.' And there it sat, and poked its hand about, wi'all the fingers joined together like a pointed serpent's head. It moved in a queer, irritable, jerky manner, that was familiar, somehow, to my grandfather. After a bit he put his head down to look at the elbow, where he fancied he saw a mole, when—crack! the hand hit him on his cheek such a blow that he tumbled over, and lay sprawling on the pavement; and he knew, by the feel of the hand as it caught him, that it was—my grandmother's. When he had picked himself up, he saw nothing more, so he went home. You may be very sure of those two things, gentlemen—[Thank you, Mr. Gibbs. I'll trouble you to fill my glass. Talking has made me terrible dry]—he never told his missus that Madam Cake's arm had sat on his knee, nor that he had seen and recognized her own arm and hand."
"I wouldn't go on this night to the church porch, not for a king's crown," said one of the miners. "Did not your grandfather suffer for his visit?"
"Well," answered the yeoman, "I reckon he did ever after feel a sort o' cramp in his knees—particularly in wet weather, where the arms had sat—but what was that to the relief? My grandmother died that same year."
"I wouldn't go there for any relief you might name," said the miner again, who was greatly impressed by the story. "I've heard the pixies hammering down in the mines, but I think naught of them. As for the Lyke-Way, what goes over that is but shadows."
"Some folks are afraid of shadows," said Fox, "and don't think themselves safe unless they have at least a woman with them for protection."
"You are again levelling at me!" exclaimed Anthony Cleverdon. "I have no fear either of shadows or substances. If you choose to come out and try with me, you will see that I am not afraid of your arm, and that I can chastise your tongue."
"Oh! my arm!" laughed Crymes. "I never supposed for a moment you dreaded that. But it is the arms without bodies, moving like worms in the churchyard at Peter Tavy, on this St. Mark's Eve, you are more likely to dread."
"I am not afraid of them," retorted Cleverdon.
"So you say; but I do not think you seem inclined to show you are not."