Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
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Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
"Think of the people!" She held him off, shaking her head, but her eyes
were wistful, intent upon his. "You have lived it down. . . . It would
all begin again. Look at me . . . think of the talk . . ."
"Let them say what they choose. . . I wonder what they would say . . ."
The Policeman stepped forward and across the road-way. He had heard
nothing, and completely misunderstood all he had seen.
"Come, you must move on there, you two!" he commanded harshly.
Suddenly, as he said it, the light above was extinguished.
"Hullo!" He paused, half-way across. "Twelve o'clock already!
Then what's taken my watch?"
A pair of feet tip-toed away in the darkness for a few yards, then broke
into a nervous run.
As a matter of fact it still wanted five minutes of midnight. And while
the Policeman fumbled for his watch and slipped back the slide of his
lantern, the white flame leaped back into the blind eye above and blazed
down as fiercely as ever.
"Something wrong with the connection, I suppose," said the Policeman,
glancing up and then down at the solitary figure left standing under the
lamp.
"Why, hullo! . . ." said he again.
But which was it?--the man or the woman?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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