Jack waited to hear no more. If truth must be told, he was at all times an arrant coward, and the horrible events of the summer had made him afraid of his own shadow. He thought no more of basket, barley, or Widow Sprat. Terror lent him wings, and he never paused to look round or breathe till he burst into the kitchen, where his mother and grandfather were sitting, and fell flat on the floor. It was some time before he could speak so as to be understood, and then he told a terrible tale of groans, and voices speaking out of the ground, of clattering hoofs pursuing him, and a white spectre as tall as a chimney which waved its arms over his head. He could give no account of the basket, and he declared, in his distress, that he would not go to the Black Copse again, no, not if they killed him. Indeed it was plain enough that to send him back would be to endanger his reason if not his life. "I cannot tell what to do!" said Dame Magdalen, very much perplexed. "Your grandfather is ill with rheumatism, and the men are all away. My ankle is so lame with the sprain I got yesterday, that I can hardly make shift to go about house, and Jenny and Priscy would either of them be as bad as Jack himself. I fear the poor old dame will suffer for want of food." Both the maids declared that they could not and would not go near the Black Copse that night for all the world. And Jenny added, "Not for King Monmouth himself, God bless him!" "Hush, fool!" said Master Evans, sternly. "There is more danger in one such speech as that than in all the ghosts in Somersetshire. Let me never hear the name of that unhappy man spoken under my roof!" Jenny was careful to put the dairy door between herself and her master before she muttered that King Monmouth would come to his own yet, in spite of them all. "As for you, Jack, you had better take your supper, and then go to bed and sleep off your fright, which I dare say has not taken away your appetite," said Master Evans. "I do not know what you will do, Magdalen. I fear the poor woman must go supperless to bed." "I will carry the basket to Dame Sprat!" said Winifred, who had sat all this time in the chimney-corner without speaking a word. "You, Winifred!" said her mother, surprised. "But will you not be afraid?" "No, mother, I do not think there is any danger," replied Winifred. "Oh, you are wondrous brave, Miss Winifred!" said Jack, not very well pleased. "Just wait till you hear the headless horse speaking to you—that's all!" "It would be so strange to hear a horse speak at all that I do not think his not having a head would make much difference," replied Winifred, slyly. "Are you sure it was a horse which followed you, Jack, or did you only hear the clattering of your own shoes?" Jack muttered something about girls thinking they knew more than any one else, and followed Jenny into the dairy, that he might enlarge upon his adventure to a more credulous listener.