Did you ever have the opportunity of noticing how long it takes for a sound like this to die quite away on the calm night-air? I seemed to hear it still, floating off in the distance, when I became aware that some figure was advancing up the lane towards us with a rather swift step. It's Tod this time, I thought, and naturally looked out; and I don't mind telling that I caught hold of the bars of the stile for companionship, in my shock of terror. I had never seen the dead walking; but I do believe I thought I saw it then. It looked like a corpse in its winding-sheet; whether man or woman, none could tell. An ashey-white, still, ghastly face, enveloped around with bands of white linen, was turned full to the moonlight, that played upon the rigid features. The whole person, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, was enshrouded in a white garment. All thoughts of Tod went out of me; and I'm not sure but my hair rose up on end as the thing came on. You may laugh at me, all of you, but just you go and try it. My fear went for nothing, however; it didn't damage me. Of all the awful cries ever heard, shrill at first, changing to something like the barking of a dog afterwards, those were the worst that arose opposite. They came from Phoebe. The girl had stood petrified, with straining eyes and laboured breath, like one who has not the power to fly, while the thing advanced. Only when it stopped close and looked at her did the pent-up cries come forth. Then she turned to fly, and the white figure leaped the stile, and went after her into the copse. What immediately followed I cannot remember--never could remember it; but it seemed that not more than a minute had elapsed when I and Molly and Hannah were standing over Phoebe, lying in convulsions on the ground, and the creature nowhere to be seen. The cries had been heard in the road, and some people passing came running up. They lifted the girl in their arms, and bore her homewards. My senses were coming to me, showing plainly enough that it was no "shadow," but some ill-starred individual dressed up to personate one. Poor Phoebe! I could hear her cries still, though the group was already out of the copse and crossing the open field beyond. Somebody touched me on the shoulder. "Tod! Did you do it?" "Do what?" asked Tod, who was out of breath with running. "What was all that row?" I told him. Somebody had made himself into a ghost, with a tied-up whitened face, just as the dead have, and came up the Green Lane in a sheet; and Phoebe was being carried home in convulsions. "You are a fool, Johnny," was his wrathful answer. "I am not one to risk a thing of that sort, not even for those two old women we came out to frighten. Look here."