At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as
if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over
his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry
to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and
peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his
head.

'It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily,
and very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or
since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the
folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how
dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn't like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.

'I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don't know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn't come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,