“Did Grandma say ‘_In_ church-porch’ or ‘Nigh to church-porch’? I can’t mind which. The porch do seem to be awful dark—and ’twould be oncommon close inside. There do seem to be scarce room for the sperrets to get past if you was to stand there, without they went through you.” She shivered: the porch did certainly look uninviting, swathed as it was in awful shadow, and festooned with ivy, tendrils of which stirred every now and then, uncannily as it seemed, for there was no breeze, and the motion was probably caused by some of the many birds that had made homes for themselves in its green fastnesses. “I reckon it will do just as well if I stop here under tree,” said Martha decisively. “I can see everything what goes in or out, and ’twouldn’t be so far to run if—” she glanced apprehensively at the porch again, measured the distance between it and the gate, and finally, moving swiftly towards the latter, propped it carefully open with a large stone. “The road do run all downhill too,” she said to herself, feeling somewhat reassured as she glanced down the lane; she possessed a light pair of heels—even if a spirit were to pursue her she fancied she could distance it. Under the big cypress tree she now took up her stand, drawing her dark skirts closely about her, and only peering out occasionally behind the trunk. The moments passed very slowly, as it seemed to her; now and then the squeak of a bat broke the stillness, at other times a rustle in the long grass betokened the passage of some nocturnal wanderer—a stoat possibly, or a rat. On these occasions Martha would hitch up her skirts a little and look fearfully round—she was almost as much afraid of rats as of ghosts. Once she thought she heard a kind of stealthy movement in the grass just behind her, and almost uttered a shriek of terror as the possibility occurred to her that it might be a snake. After looking over her shoulder in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of this mysterious sound she turned round again suddenly. Lo! advancing with swift and noiseless tread up the flagged path was a figure, the outlines of which were strangely familiar to her. As it approached nearer to her place of ambush the moonlight distinctly revealed a countenance which seemed to be that of Samuel Bundy. _Seemed_ to be I say, for it wore an expression strangely unlike that which Martha had been accustomed to see on the blunt and honest face of her former lover: an expression of stern gravity; the eyes were fixed, the mouth resolutely set, the face, moreover, was deadly pale in the moonlight, and what alarmed Martha more than anything else was the fact that the figure moved onward without making a sound. Into the church-porch it passed, and was there engulfed by the darkness. Martha’s heart was thumping like a sledgehammer; it was Sam sure enough—or rather Sam’s wraith, for surely no living thing could look or move in that ghostly fashion.