“I wish you’d out with it!” he exclaimed, impatiently.  “What could happen?  No one ever comes along Yew-lane; and if they did they wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I know no one ever comes near it when they can help it,” was the reply; “so, to be sure, you couldn’t get set upon.  And a pious lad of your sort wouldn’t mind no other kind.  Not like ghosts, or anything of that.”

And Bully Tom looked round at his companion; a fact disagreeable from its rarity.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Bill, stoutly.

“Of course you don’t,” sneered his tormentor; “you’re too well educated.  Some people does, though.  I suppose them that has seen them does.  Some people thinks that murdered men walk.  P’raps some people thinks the man as was murdered in Yew-lane walks.”

“What man?” gasped Bill, feeling very chilly down the spine.

“Him that was riding by the cross-roads and dragged into Yew-lane, and his head cut off and never found, and his body buried in the churchyard,” said Bully Tom, with a rush of superior information; “and all I know is, if I thought he walked in Yew-lane, or any other lane, I wouldn’t go within five mile of it after dusk—­that’s all.  But then I’m not book-larned.”

The two last statements were true if nothing else was that the man had said; and after holding up his feet and examining his boots with his head a-one-side, as if considering their probable efficiency against flesh and blood, he slid from his perch, and “loafed” slowly up the street, whistling and kicking the stones as he went along.  As to Beauty Bill, he fled home as fast as his legs would carry him.  By the door stood Bessy, washing some clothes; who turned her pretty face as he came up.

“You’re late, Bill,” she said.  “Go in and get your tea, it’s set out.  It’s night-school night, thou knows, and Master Arthur always likes his class to time.”  He lingered, and she continued—­“John Gardener was down this afternoon about some potatoes, and he says Master Arthur is expecting a friend.”

Bill did not heed this piece of news, any more than the slight flush on his sister’s face as she delivered it; he was wondering whether what Bully Tom said was mere invention to frighten him, or whether there was any truth in it.

“Bessy!” he said, “was there a man ever murdered in Yew-lane?”

Bessy was occupied with her own thoughts, and did not notice the anxiety of the question.

“I believe there was,” she answered carelessly, “somewhere about there.  It’s a hundred years ago or more.  There’s an old gravestone over him in the churchyard by the wall, with an odd verse on it.  They say the parish clerk wrote it.  But get your tea, or you’ll be late, and father’ll be angry;” and Bessy took up her tub and departed.

Poor Bill!  Then it was too true.  He began to pull up his trousers and look at his grazed legs; and the thoughts of his aching shins, Bully Tom’s cruelty, the unavoidable night-school, and the possible ghost, were too much for him, and he burst into tears.