and drew forth the coins, one by one, and rolled them along the table. The Hockins saw the glint of the metal, and the shadow cast by each piece of money as it rolled. The first coin lodged at the further left-hand corner and the second rested near it; and so on, the pieces were rolled, and ranged themselves in order, ten in a row. Then the next ten were run across the white cloth in the same manner, and dropped over on their sides below the first row; thus also the third ten. And all the time the dead woman was mouthing, as though counting, but still inaudibly.
The couple stood motionless observing proceedings, till suddenly a cloud passed before the face of the moon, so dense as to eclipse the light.
Then in a paroxysm of terror both turned and fled up the stairs, bolted their bedroom door, and jumped into bed.
There was no sleep for them that night. In the gloom when the moon was concealed, in the glare when it shone forth, it was the same, they could hear the light rolling of the coins along the table, and the click as they fell over. Was the supply inexhaustible? It was not so, but apparently the dead woman did not weary of counting the coins. When all had been ranged, she could be heard moving to the further end of the table, and there re-commencing the same proceeding of coin-rolling.
Not till near daybreak did this sound cease, and not till the maid, Sally, had begun to stir in the inner bedchamber did Hockin and his wife venture to rise. Neither would suffer the servant girl to descend till they had been down to see in what condition the kitchen was. They found that the table had been cleared, the coins were all back in the teapot, and that and the spoons were where they had themselves placed them. The sheet, moreover, was neatly folded, and replaced where it had been before.
The Hockins did not speak to one another of their experiences during the past night, so long as they were in the house, but when Jabez was in the field, Elizabeth went to him and said: ‘Husband, what about Aunt Joanna?’
‘I don’t know – maybe it were a dream.’
‘Curious us should ha’ dreamed alike.’
‘I don’t know that; ’twere the gin made us dream, and us both had gin, so us dreamed the same thing.’
‘’Twere more like real truth than dream,’ observed Elizabeth. ‘We’ll take it as dream,’ said Jabez. ‘Mebbe it won’t happen again.’ But precisely the same sounds were heard on the following night. The moon was obscured by thick clouds, and neither of the two had the courage to descend to the kitchen. But they could hear the patter of feet, and then the roll and click of the coins. Again sleep was impossible.
‘Whatever shall we do?’ asked Elizabeth Hockin next morning of her husband. “Us can’t go on like this wi’ the dead woman about our house nightly. There’s no tellin’ she might take it into her head to come upstairs and pull the sheets off us. As we took hers, she may think it fair to carry off ours.”
‘I think,’ said Jabez sorrowfully, ‘we’ll have to return ’em.’
‘But how?’
After some consultation the couple resolved on conveying all the deceased woman’s goods to the churchyard, by night, and placing them on her grave.
‘I reckon,’ said Hockin, ‘we’ll bide in the porch and watch what happens. If they be left there till mornin’, why we may carry ’em back wi’ an easy conscience. We’ve spent some pounds over her buryin’.’
‘What have it come to?’
‘Three pounds five and fourpence, as I make it out.’
‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, ‘we must risk it.’
When night had fallen murk, the farmer and his wife crept from their house, carrying the linen sheets, the teapot, and the silver spoons. They did not start till late, for fear of encountering any villagers on the way, and not till after the maid, Sally, had gone to bed.
They fastened the farm door behind them. The night was dark and stormy, with scudding clouds, so dense as to make deep night, when they did not part and allow the moon to peer forth.
They walked timorously, and side by side, looking about them as they proceeded, and on reaching the churchyard gate they halted to pluck up courage before opening and venturing within. Jabez had furnished himself with a bottle of gin, to give courage to himself and his wife.
Together they heaped the articles that had belonged to Aunt Joanna upon the fresh grave, but as they did so the wind caught the linen and unfurled and flapped it, and they were forced to place stones upon it to hold it down. Then, quaking with fear, they retreated to the church porch, and Jabez, uncorking the bottle, first took a long pull himself, and then presented it to his wife.
And now down came a tearing rain, driven by a blast from the Atlantic, howling among the gravestones, and screaming in the battlements of the tower and its bell-chamber windows. The night was so dark, and the rain fell so heavily, that they could see nothing for full half an hour. But then the clouds were rent asunder, and the moon glared white and ghastly over the churchyard.
Elizabeth caught her husband by the arm and pointed. There was, however, no need for her to indicate that on which his eyes were fixed already.
Both saw a lean hand come up out of the grave, and lay hold of one of the fine linen sheets and drag at it. They saw it drag the sheet by one corner, and then it went down underground, and the sheet followed, as though sucked down in a vortex; fold on fold it descended, till the entire sheet had disappeared.
‘Her have taken it for her windin’ sheet,’ whispered Elizabeth. ‘Whativer will her do wi’ the rest?’
‘Have a drop o’ gin; this be terrible tryin’,’ said Jabez in an undertone; and again the couple put their lips to the bottle, which came away considerably lighter after the draughts.
‘Look!’ gasped Elizabeth.
Again the lean hand with long fingers appeared above the soil, and this was seen groping about the grass till it laid hold of the teapot. Then it groped again, and gathered up the spoons, that flashed in the moonbeams. Next, up came the second hand, and a long arm that stretched along the grave till it reached the other sheets. At once, on being raised, these sheets were caught by the wind, and flapped and fluttered like half-hoisted sails. The hands retained them for a while till they bellied with the wind, and then let them go, and they were swept away by the blast across the churchyard, over the wall, and lodged in the carpenter’s yard that adjoined, among his timber.
‘She have sent ’em to the Hexts,’ whispered Elizabeth. Next the hands began to trifle with the teapot, and to shake out some of the coins.
In a minute some silver pieces were flung with so true an aim that they fell clinking down on the floor of the porch.
How many coins, how much money was cast, the couple were in no mood to estimate. Then they saw the hands collect the pillow-cases, and proceed to roll up the teapot and silver spoons in them, and, that done, the white bundle was cast into the air, and caught by the wind and carried over the churchyard wall into the wheelwright’s yard.
At once a curtain of vapour rushed across the face of the moon, and again the graveyard was buried in darkness. Half an hour elapsed before the moon shone out again. Then the Hockins saw that nothing was stirring in the cemetery.
‘I reckon us may go now,’ said Jabez.
‘Let us gather up what she chucked to us,’ advised Elizabeth. So the couple felt about the floor, and collected a number of coins.
