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The man threw out one leg before him like the pendulum of a clock.

“Night school’s opened, eh?” he inquired; and back swung the pendulum against Bill’s shins.

“Yes;” and the boy screwed his legs on one side.

“You don’t go, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” said Bill, trying not to feel ashamed of the fact, “Father can’t spare me to the day-school now, so our Bessy persuaded him to let me go at nights.”

Bully Tom’s face looked a shade darker, and the pendulum took a swing which it was fortunate the lad avoided; but the conversation continued with every appearance of civility.

“You come back by Yew-lane, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Why, there’s no one lives your way but old Johnson; you must come back alone?”

“Of course, I do,” said Bill, beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable.

“It must be dark now before school looses?” was the next inquiry; and the boy’s discomfort increased, he hardly knew why, as he answered–

“There’s a moon.”

“So there is,” said Bully Tom, in a tone of polite assent; “and there’s a weathercock on the church-steeple but I never heard of either of ’em coming down to help a body, whatever happened.”

Bill’s discomfort had become alarm.

“Why, what could happen?” he asked. “I don’t understand you.”

His companion whistled, looked up in the air, and kicked vigorously, but said nothing. Bill was not extraordinarily brave, but he had a fair amount both of spirit and sense; and having a shrewd suspicion that Bully Tom was trying to frighten him, he almost made up his mind to run off then and there. Curiosity, however, and a vague alarm which he could not throw off, made him stay for a little more information.

“I wish you’d out with it!” he exclaimed, impatiently. “What could happen? No one ever comes along Yew-lane; and if they did they wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I know no one ever comes near it when they can help it,” was the reply; “so, to be sure, you couldn’t get set upon. And a pious lad of your sort wouldn’t mind no other kind. Not like ghosts, or anything of that.”

And Bully Tom looked round at his companion; a fact disagreeable from its rarity.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Bill, stoutly.

“Of course you don’t,” sneered his tormentor; “you’re too well educated. Some people does, though. I suppose them that has seen them does. Some people thinks that murdered men walk. P’raps some people thinks the man as was murdered in Yew-lane walks.”

“What man?” gasped Bill, feeling very chilly down the spine.

“Him that was riding by the cross-roads and dragged into Yew-lane, and his head cut off and never found, and his body buried in the churchyard,” said Bully Tom, with a rush of superior information; “and all I know is, if I thought he walked in Yew-lane, or any other lane, I wouldn’t go within five mile of it after dusk–that’s all. But then I’m not book-larned.”

The two last statements were true if nothing else was that the man had said; and after holding up his feet and examining his boots with his head a-one-side, as if considering their probable efficiency against flesh and blood, he slid from his perch, and “loafed” slowly up the street, whistling and kicking the stones as he went along. As to Beauty Bill, he fled home as fast as his legs would carry him. By the door stood Bessy, washing some clothes; who turned her pretty face as he came up.

“You’re late, Bill,” she said. “Go in and get your tea, it’s set out. It’s night-school night, thou knows, and Master Arthur always likes his class to time.” He lingered, and she continued–“John Gardener was down this afternoon about some potatoes, and he says Master Arthur is expecting a friend.”

Bill did not heed this piece of news, any more than the slight flush on his sister’s face as she delivered it; he was wondering whether what Bully Tom said was mere invention to frighten him, or whether there was any truth in it.