Walking along a stretch of bleak moorland bordering the sea, taking always the nearest cuts across the jutting points of rocky headland, we at length approached the quaint graveyard of Bigging.  The night was clear, and light almost as day; but Robbie and Willie would, I believe, rather have gone many miles out of our direct way than go near that awesome place.

The ruined chapel and the long, flat tombstones surrounding it, seemed to have an eerie influence upon our imagination, and we could but whistle some merry tune to keep up our hearts.  Willie Hercus, though naturally daring, was now especially timid, the remembrance of that skull he had handled having taken such hold of his mind that the simple mention of it by one of us was enough to make his voice sink to a trembling whisper, as though he feared the dead man might come to life again and appear in our midst to accuse us of having disturbed his bones.

I think Tom Kinlay was the only one of us who did not look with superstitious awe into the dark shadows that hung about those ruined walls and silent tombstones; but he was so tall and strong that nothing seemed to daunt him, and soon he made a proposal that went far towards assuring me that he was absolutely fearless.

“Now, lads,” said he, when we were passing the low wall of the burying ground, “let us get in here and spread out our things on one of those flat stones, and then we can share them out.  Come along; nobody can disturb us in that quiet burying ground.”

“What!” exclaimed Robbie, betraying his terror at the proposal.  “Over there among the graves!  Not I. I’m not going into such a place after the sun has gone down.  Why, we canna be sure that the ghosts of the dead will not spring out upon us!”

“No, I’m not going in there either,” chimed in Hercus.  “We can divide the siller here on the moor just as well as in that fearsome place.  Come back, Hal, dinna you gang either.”

“Well, well, what a pack of frightened bairns ye are!” said Kinlay, preparing to enter by the open gate.  “Come along.  What on earth can ye be feared at?”

Thus taunted for want of courage, Willie and Robbie overcame their superstitious scruples, and we all four made our way in among the graves.

We spread our treasures upon the top of a flat tombstone that was somewhat higher than its neighbours and formed a convenient table for our purpose.  The stone was overgrown with lichens and moss, and skirted by a growth of nettles and thistles.  As we stood around it in the twilight, surrounded by a wild solitude, we might have been mistaken for a company of pirates dividing their ill-gotten gains.

Whilst Kinlay and Hercus were opening out the two seals’ skins my eyes idly wandered over the surface of the tombstone, and were arrested by the inscription carved thereon.  There was an epitaph in some foreign language, old and worn, but under this was a name that seemed to be newly cut.  It was the name “Thora Quendale.”