The veteran smiled grimly, as if pleased with the spirit which the boy manifested, and said, in a joking way, “Now take up that scull, and say to it—Let the owner of this meet me at the midnight hour, and invite me to a banquet spread on yon green stone by his bony fingers—
Come ghost, come devil,
Come good, come evil,
Or let old Thompson himself appear,
For I will partake of his midnight cheer.”[133]
Kitchen, laughing with the glee of a schoolboy, and with the thoughtlessness incident to youth, repeated the ridiculous lines after his director, and then leaving the church-yard vaulted over the stile leading to the school-house, where, rejoining his companions, he quickly forgot the scene wherein he had been engaged; indeed it impressed him so little, that he never mentioned the circumstance to a single individual.
The boy at his usual hour of ten retired to rest, and soon fell into a deep slumber, from which he was roused by some one rattling the latch of his door, and singing beneath his window. He arose and opened the casement. It was a calm moonlight night, and he distinctly discerned the old soldier, who was rapping loudly at the door, and chanting the elegant stanzas he had repeated at the grave of the villager.
“And what pray now may you be wanting at this time of night?” asked the boy, wholly undaunted by the strangeness of the visitation. “If you cannot lie in bed yourself, you ought to allow others to rest.”
“What,” replied the old man, “hast thou so soon forgotten thy promise?” and he repeated the lines “Come good, come evil, &c.”
Kitchen laughed at again hearing the jingle of these ridiculous rhymes, which to him seemed to be “such as nurses use to frighten babes withal.” At this the soldier’s countenance assumed a peculiar expression, and the full gaze of his dark eye, which appeared to glow with something inexpressibly wild and unearthly, was bent upon the boy, who, as he encountered it, felt an indescribable sensation steal over him, and began to repent of his incautious levity. After a short silence the stranger again addressed him, but in tones so hollow and sepulchral, that his youthful blood was chilled, and his heart beat strongly and quickly in his bosom.
“Boy, thy word must be kept! Promises made with the grave are not to be lightly broken—
“Amidst the cold graves of the coffin’d dead
Is the table deck’d and the banquet spread;
Then haste thee thither without delay,
For nigh is the time, away! away!”
“Then be it as you wish,” said the boy, in some slight degree resuming his courage; “go; I will follow.” On hearing this the soldier departed, and Kitchen watched his figure till it was wholly lost in the mists of the night.