"I don't care whether you go or not. If you do, who is to stand surety for you that you go where I say--to the churchyard of Peter Tavy?" "One of you can come and see." "There!" laughed Fox, "crying off already! Afraid to go alone, and appealing for company." "By heaven, this is too bad!" cried Anthony, and started to his feet. "Don't go," shouted Mr. Solomon Gibbs. "It's folly, and break up of good company." "There's good company with Fox Crymes girding at me at every minute. But, by heaven, I will not be jeered at as a coward. Fox has dared me to go to Peter Tavy churchyard, and go I will--alone, moreover." "No such thing," said the host; "it is too bad a night. Stay here and help finish this brew; we'll have another bowl, if Mr. Solomon approves--and Mr. Cudlip." "I will go," said Anthony, thoroughly roused, and rendered doubly excitable by the punch he had been drinking. "You have done wrong to spur him," said Gibbs, addressing Crymes. "Faith! I am a sceptic," said Fox. "I disbelieve altogether in the walking arms, and I shall be glad to learn from a credible witness whether the same be a mere fiction and fancy, or have any truth in it. Master Cudlip's grandfather lived a long time ago." "I do not believe in it either," said Cleverdon; "but although I did I would not now be deterred. Fox casts his gibes at me, and I will show him that I have metal enough to make such a trifling venture as this." He threw on his coat, grasped his long walking-stick, and went out into the storm. A furious gale was sweeping about the little hamlet of Cudlip town, where stood the tavern. It was not possible to determine from which quarter the wind came, it so eddied about the inn and the open space before it. Anthony stood against the wall outside for a moment or two till his eyes accustomed themselves somewhat to the dark. Every few moments the glare of lightning in the sky illumined the rocky ridges of White Tor and Smeardun, under which Cudlip town lay, and the twisted thorns and oaks among blocks of granite that strewed the slopes before the three or four old farmhouses that were clustered about the inn. Then Anthony, having satisfied himself as to his direction, set down his head against the wind, and strode forward, with his staff feeling the way. On his right, below in this valley, roared the Tavy, but the song of the water was mixed up with that of the wind so inextricably that Anthony, had he tried it, could not have distinguished the roar of one from that of the other. The lane was between stone walls and hedges of half stone and half earth, in summer adorned with magnificent foxgloves. For a while the rain slackened, and where the walls were high Anthony had some shelter against the wind. Peter Tavy Church lay outside the village, and he would reach it without passing another house.