'I'll tell you. The first time it happened was one Sunday in last May.
Aunt had a fancy they were being followed a Sunday or two before, but
she didn't see or hear anything, except a sort of crackling noise in the
hedge. But this particular Sunday they had hardly got through the stile
into the fields, when she heard a peculiar kind of low whistle. She took
no notice, thinking it was no concern of hers or her husband's, but as
they went on she heard it again, and then again, and it followed them
the whole walk, and it made her so uncomfortable, because she didn't
know where it was coming from or who was doing it, or why. Then, just as
they got out of the fields into the lane, uncle said he felt quite
faint, and he thought he would try a little brandy at the "Turpin's
Head," a small public-house there is there. And she looked at him and
saw his face was quite purple--more like apoplexy, as she says, than
fainting fits, which make people look a sort of greenish-white. But she
said nothing, and thought perhaps uncle had a peculiar way of fainting
of his own, as he always was a man to have his own way of doing
everything. So she just waited in the road, and he went ahead and
slipped into the public, and aunt says she thought she saw a little
figure rise out of the dusk and slip in after him, but she couldn't be
sure. And when uncle came out he looked red instead of purple, and said
he felt much better; and so they went home quietly together, and nothing
more was said. You see, uncle had said nothing about the whistling, and
aunt had been so frightened that she didn't dare speak, for fear they
might be both shot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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