"No," said I, "I put nothing into it."
"Then how comes it filled?" he asked. "Why, halloo! what have we here?" and he emptied out of it a heap of human bones and a shattered skull. How they got into the sack I shall never know. The remains were very old, and were encrusted with stalagmite. They lie now in Horton churchyard. I believe the Boggart has not been seen since.
* * * * * * *
For a considerable time during our walk from Malham Tarn to Settle I had been silent. Keene could endure it no longer, and at last exclaimed, "Really this is intolerable! You have been in a brown study for the last half-hour without speaking a word. A penny for your thoughts!"
"To tell you the truth," I replied, "I have been thinking over what might have happened if you had fallen lame at Arncliffe, if I had gone on a geological walk without you, and had lost my way on Penigent, and had fallen in with a Boggart, who tried to precipitate me down a pot, and if I had been rescued by an ignus fatuus, and had finally descended the pot and brought up the Boggart's bones!"
Mr. Keene stared at me with amazement. I then related to him what I have just related to you, good reader, and I concluded with the observation: "All this, you know, might have happened, but unfortunately it didn't. You have had my thoughts, so hand me your penny."
FOOTNOTE:
[23] Contributed by me to Once a Week, March, 1867.