“My G—d! did you hear that?”
“What? Yes—one of your horses over in your pasture?”
“No, there ain’t no horses over in that field, or in a field between here and Stamper’s house. It’s all in crop. That’s over toward the grave-yard.”
“Oh! the d—l!” the old man exclaimed, impatiently.
But Still seized him.
“Look! Look yonder!” he gasped. The lawyer looked, and at the moment the outline of a man on horseback was clearly defined against the skyline on the crest of a hill. How far away it was he could not tell; but apparently it was just behind the dark clump of trees where lay the old Gray burying-ground. The next second the moon was shrouded and the horseman faded out.
When Mr. Bagby reached Major Welch’s, the latter came out to meet him: he had sat up for him.
“I thought you had come a half-hour ago. I fancied I heard your horse neigh,” he said.
As he went to call a servant, he picked up from a small side-porch a parcel wrapped around with paper. He took it in to the light. It was a large bunch of jonquils, addressed to Ruth.
“Ah!” thought the old lawyer, with a chuckle, “that is what our ghostly horseman was doing.”