For he had seen, on the patch of sea beyond the haven, a white frigate
steal up Channel like a ghost. She had passed out of his sight by this
time, but he was still thinking of one man that she bore.



THE HAUNTED DRAGOON.


Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale
church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate--where the
graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their
inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck--the base of the
churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax
and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a
well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish,
for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this
belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which
led to this are still a winter's tale in the neighbourhood. I set them
down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by
Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous
share in them; and because of them Sam's father had carried a white face
to his grave.


My father and mother (said Sam) married late in life, for his trade was
what mine is, and 'twasn't till her fortieth year that my mother could
bring herself to kiss a gravedigger. That accounts, maybe, for my being
born rickety and with other drawbacks that only made father the fonder.
Weather permitting, he'd carry me off to churchyard, set me upon a flat