"Don't feel unwell, pray don't; it is a well-known fact, that any person who feels ill in a churchyard is sure to die within the year." "Let us leave then, for I do feel very ill;" but the purveyor of worms was now too much occupied to listen to me. Hopeless, therefore, of inducing him to leave till he had filled his box, I sat down on a tombstone, and the noise he made with the spade in the silence, the darkness, and the peculiar and sickening odour of the place, filled me with an indescribable sense of fear and horror. At length the poacher paused, and having disentangled a very long worm from the twisted roots of a large clod, he said, "This makes one hundred and thirteen--a holy number. Now I've done, my lad; let us be off." "Yes--oh, yes!"--for the minutes seemed hours--"let us go instantly;" and I sprang from the tombstone, while Père Séguin proceeded deliberately to fill up the holes, and replace the turf, whistling through his moustache just as if he had been in the middle of his garden. "One hundred and thirteen!--I like that number." "So do I, Père Séguin; but do let us be going. If we remain here, they will think that we have killed and buried some one. Do, pray, be off;" and I made for the wall. "Stop!" he said suddenly, drawing himself up to his full height, six feet three, "Stop!" and throwing out his long arms, which made his shadow on the stones resemble an immense black cross, "Hold there! Look! Do you see that tomb--that large gray stone?" "I see nothing, Père Séguin, I will see nothing. I close my eyes, and only desire to be gone." "As you please," said the poacher; "but you are wrong. I could have told you a curious history--a most interesting history." "Thanks for your histories--much obliged to you; but I have had enough of them." Still Père Séguin would persevere: "A woman, who has appeared to me three times--yes, three following days--spoken to me, pulled me by the fingers and by the beard eight days after her death." "Yes! yes! I know; but which way are we to get out of this infernal place?" "Why, what a hurry you are in!--I say stop, and let me say good night to her!"--and Père Séguin approached the tall gray stone, the moon shining full upon it, and struck it with the handle of his spade, calling each time in a solemn voice, "Madeleine! Madeleine! Madeleine!" Had I been at that frightful moment cut in four quarters, not one drop of blood would have been found in my veins; my teeth chattered with terror, and I would have given every acre of my inheritance for strength enough to run away. "Madeleine! Madeleine!" le Père Séguin continued in a low and churchyard tone, "Madeleine!" he cried, leaning on the gray tomb, "'tis me, Séguin--le Père Séguin; good night, good night, Madeleine!" I could not speak, I could not move; and certainly had the lady whispered only one single little word in reply, I should have fainted.