Urith: A Tale of DartmoorBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
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Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England) -- Fiction
"Not I," responded his comrade. "If it had been the Lyke-Way, that's
different. I'd walk that any night. But to go under a roof, in the
churchyard--it were tempting o' Providence."
"Go on with your story," said Solomon Gibbs. "Those that interrupt lose
a turn of filling from the bowl."
"Well, then," continued Cudlip, "my grandfather was seated for some time
in the porch, and uncommon dark it was, for there are a plenty of trees
in the churchyard, and the night was dirty, and the sky covered with
clouds. How long he sat there I cannot tell, but long enough to get
uneasy; not that he was afraid, bless your souls, of what he might see,
but uneasy at being there so long and seeing nothing, so that he must go
home to my grandmother without a word o' explanation or information that
might pacify her, should she be inclined to be troublesome. Just as he
was about to get up, in a mighty bad temper, and to go home, cursing
the fools who had got up the tale of St. Mark's Eve, why, looking along
the avenue in the yard, what should he see but some curious long, white
things, like monstrous worms, crawling and tumbling, and making for the
church porch. You will understand, gentlemen, that my grandfather
thought he would do better to wait where he was, partly, because he did
not wish to pass these worm-like creatures, but, chiefly, that he might
have something to report to his missus, to make her placable and
agreeable."
"But what where they?" asked Anthony Cleverdon.
"I'll tell you, Master Anthony. They was human arms, from the shoulder,
walking of themselves; first they laid along from shoulder to elbow,
then the hand from elbow forward lifted itself and looked about, and
then came down flat on the palm, and lifted all the hinder part from the
elbow-joint till it stood upright, and then turned a somersault, and so
on again, two steps, as it were, and then a somersault; a coorious sort
of proceeding, I take it."
"Very," said Crymes, with a sneer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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