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The Seaboard Parish Volume 2 by George MacDonald
page 69 of 182 (37%)
of sea-water, and nows and thens a great spout coming in through a hole in
the rock; for it was high-water and a wind off the sea, as I tell you.
And there was a coffin afloat on the water, and every time the spout come
through, it set it knocking agen the side o' the wout, and that was the
ghost."

"What a horrible idea!" I said, with a half-shudder at the unrest of the
dead.

The old man uttered a queer long-drawn sound,--neither a chuckle, a crow,
nor a laugh, but a mixture of all three,--and turned himself yet again
to the work which, as he approached the end of his narration, he had
suspended, that he might make his story _tell_, I suppose, by looking me
in the face. And as he turned he said, "I thought you would like to be
comfortable then as well as other people, sir."

I could not help laughing to see how the cunning old fellow had caught me.
I have not yet been able to find out how much of truth there was in his
story. From the twinkle of his eye I cannot help suspecting that if he did
not invent the tale, he embellished it, at least, in order to produce the
effect which he certainly did produce. Humour was clearly his predominant
disposition, the reflex of which was to be seen, after a mild lunar
fashion, on the countenance of his wife. Neither could I help thinking
with pleasure, as I turned away, how the merry little old man would enjoy
telling his companions how he had posed the new parson. Very welcome was
he to his laugh for my part. Yet I gladly left the churchyard, with its
sunshine above and its darkness below. Indeed I had to look up to the
glittering vanes on the four pinnacles of the church-tower, dwelling aloft
in the clean sunny air, to get the feeling of the dark vault, and the
floating coffin, and the knocking heard in the windy church, out of my
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