The few days I spent in Fambridge put all thought of the two queer incidents out of my mind, which will show that the subsequent events were not the outcome of an overtaxed imagination or a course of long brooding upon disquieting phenomena.
It must have been about nine o’clock in the evening that my Fambridge friend put a little Welsh pony into his governess-car to drive me back the four odd miles to my cottage. The night was fine, but there were clouds about and no moon, so that objects outside the radius of the lamps were hard to distinguish. The pony had already had a fairly hard day of it along the coast, but he was a sturdy little beast and pulled like a steam-engine, rattling us down to the outskirts of Canewdon in excellent time.
We had been bowling along, talking about the day’s sport, and were now rapidly nearing a stile leading to a footpath upon the left of the road, which takes one by a short cut across a field, over another stile, into the churchyard, and so into the village High Street. We had barely reached the stile when the pony pulled up short, reared, and refused to go another step in that direction. The pony, always a strong and willing little chap, had never done such a thing in his life before, and my friend was not only puzzled but annoyed. A sound beating had no more effect than words of encouragement; there the little beggar stuck, his four legs splayed out, the picture of all that was most stubborn in nature, whilst we two sat in the car trying to devise some plan by which to budge him.
My friend was at last obliged to ask me to take the short cut I have just spoken of instead of being driven round by the road the remaining mile and a half to my cottage. I was, of course, willing enough. The short cut would take me barely ten minutes, and I had very little to carry; so, bidding him “Good night,” I jumped out. As I came from behind the trap I noticed a tiny flickering light a few yards ahead, upon the left-hand side of the road, but it was very dim and did not arrest my attention sufficiently to make any impression on the mind. I was able to lead the pony round without any difficulty, and when his head faced Fambridge he seemed to recover his spirits at once, and the red points behind the lamps receded at a rattling pace up the road. When these had disappeared I turned again to climb the stile, but became at once uneasily conscious of something unusual a little way ahead of me.
The spot the pony had refused at was a good deal shadowed by large elms, and these, together with the cloudy sky, made the road still more obscure. The small light, which I had taken little notice of at first—thinking it probably one of the village lights showing through the trees—was still ahead; only, instead of being upon the left of the road, it was now upon the right. For a few seconds I stood looking at it, feeling very much like turning tail and bolting down the road. The flame, for it was no other, showed greeny—white against the black background and shivered in a strange, eerie way.
The most extraordinary part of the business was that it seemed to come from nothing visible, but to appear, as it were, burning in space three or four feet above the road.
“THIS MYSTERIOUS SOMETHING TOOK THREE RAPID STRIDES ACROSS THE ROAD AND DISAPPEARED.”
I had, of course, read ghost stories in which “corpse candles” and ghostly lights of one sort and another figured largely, but I had never expected to come across one, and this could be translated in no other way.[2] The close proximity of the churchyard, with the square tower of the church itself showing through the trees, added too much colour to the scene to my liking; but, scared though I was, a certain fascination took hold of me, and I advanced a step or two in order to examine the phenomenon at closer range. I had scarcely taken two paces, however, when the clouds parted a little, giving a better light beneath the trees, and at the same moment the weird flame flickered wildly and went out.
[2] The light somewhat resembled the ignis fatuus, or will-o’-the-wisp, but was larger and greener in colour. Moreover, there was no pond or marshy ground anywhere near the road.