At another time Bob might have saluted the stranger as he passed with a friendly “good night”; but, somehow, he was out of humour and in no genial mood, and was about passing without any courtesy of the sort, when the stranger, without taking the pipe from his mouth, raised the bottle, and with it beckoned him familiarly, while, with a sort of lurch of the head and shoulders, and at the same time shifting his seat to the end of the bench, he pantomimically invited him to share his seat and his cheer.  There was a divine fragrance of whiskey about the spot, and Bob half relented; but he remembered his promise just as he began to waver, and said: 

“No, I thank you, sir, I can’t stop to-night.”

The stranger beckoned with vehement welcome, and pointed to the vacant space on the seat beside him.

“I thank you for your polite offer,” said Bob, “but it’s what I’m too late as it is, and haven’t time to spare, so I wish you a good night.”

The traveller jingled the glass against the neck of the bottle, as if to intimate that he might at least swallow a dram without losing time.  Bob was mentally quite of the same opinion; but, though his mouth watered, he remembered his promise, and shaking his head with incorruptible resolution, walked on.

The stranger, pipe in mouth, rose from his bench, the bottle in one hand, and the glass in the other, and followed at the sexton’s heels, his dusky horse keeping close in his wake.

There was something suspicious and unaccountable in this importunity.

Bob quickened his pace, but the stranger followed close.  The sexton began to feel queer, and turned about.  His pursuer was behind, and still inviting him with impatient gestures to taste his liquor.

“I told you before,” said Bob, who was both angry and frightened, “that I would not taste it, and that’s enough.  I don’t want to have anything to say to you or your bottle; and in God’s name,” he added, more vehemently, observing that he was approaching still closer, “fall back and don’t be tormenting me this way.”

These words, as it seemed, incensed the stranger, for he shook the bottle with violent menace at Bob Martin; but, notwithstanding this gesture of defiance, he suffered the distance between them to increase.  Bob, however, beheld him dogging him still in the distance, for his pipe shed a wonderful red glow, which duskily illuminated his entire figure like the lurid atmosphere of a meteor.

“I wish the devil had his own, my boy,” muttered the excited sexton, “and I know well enough where you’d be.”

The next time he looked over his shoulder, to his dismay he observed the importunate stranger as close as ever upon his track.

“Confound you,” cried the man of skulls and shovels, almost beside himself with rage and horror, “what is it you want of me?”

The stranger appeared more confident, and kept wagging his head and extending both glass and bottle toward him as he drew near, and Bob Martin heard the horse snorting as it followed in the dark.