The clothes, at the first touch, a' ran
into a snuff o' dust in the cell whar the bayans was found. But there
was a handful o' jet buttons, and a knife with a green heft, together
wi' a couple o' pennies the poor little fella had in his pocket, I
suppose, when he was decoyed in thar, and sid his last o' the light.
And there was, amang the squire's papers, a copy o' the notice that
was prented after he was lost, when the ald squire thought he might 'a
run away, or bin took by gipsies, and it said he had a green-hefted
knife wi' him, and that his buttons were o' cut jet. Sa that is a' I
hev to say consarnin' ald Dame Crowl, o' Applewale House."
THE DEAD SEXTON
The sunsets were red, the nights were long, and the weather pleasantly
frosty; and Christmas, the glorious herald of the New Year, was at
hand, when an event--still recounted by winter firesides, with a
horror made delightful by the mellowing influence of years--occurred
in the beautiful little town of Golden Friars, and signalized, as the
scene of its catastrophe, the old inn known throughout a wide region
of the Northumbrian counties as the George and Dragon.
Toby Crooke, the sexton, was lying dead in the old coach-house in the
inn yard. The body had been discovered, only half an hour before this
story begins, under strange circumstances, and in a place where it
might have lain the better part of a week undisturbed; and a dreadful
suspicion astounded the village of Golden Friars.
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