The stranger beckoned with vehement welcome, and pointed to the vacant place on the seat beside him.
"I thank you for your polite offer," said Bob, "but it's what I'm too late as it is, and haven't time to spare, so I wish you a good-night."
The traveler jingled the glass against the neck of the bottle, as if to intimate that he might at least swallow a dram without losing time. Bob was mentally quite of the same opinion; but, though his mouth watered, he remembered his promise, and, shaking his head with incorruptible resolution, walked on.
The stranger, pipe in mouth, rose from his bench, the bottle in one hand, and the glass in the other, and followed at the sexton's heels, his dusky horse keeping close in his wake.
There was something suspicious and unaccountable in this importunity.
Bob quickened his pace, but the stranger followed close. The sexton began to feel queer, and turned about. His pursuer was behind, and still inviting him with impatient gestures to taste his liquor.
"I told you before," said Bob, who was both angry and frightened, "that I would not taste it, and that's enough. I don't want to have any thing to say to you or your bottle; and in God's name," he added, more vehemently, observing that he was approaching still closer, "fall back, and don't be tormenting me this way."
These words, as it seemed, incensed the stranger, for he shook the bottle with violent menace at Bob Martin; but, notwithstanding this gesture of defiance, he suffered the distance between them to increase. Bob, however, beheld him dogging him still in the distance, for his pipe shed a wonderful red glow, which duskily illuminated his entire figure, like a lurid atmosphere of meteor.
"I wish the devil had his own, my boy," muttered the excited sexton, "and I know well enough where you'd be."
The next time he looked over his shoulder, to his dismay he observed the importunate stranger as close as ever upon his track.