At what time of the night she could not tell, she awoke, and saw a
man, with his hat on, in her room. He had a candle in his hand, which
he shaded with his coat from her eye; his back was towards her, and he
was rummaging in the drawer in which she usually kept her money.
Having got her quarter's pension of two pounds that day, however, she
had placed it, folded in a rag, in the corner of her tea caddy, and
locked it up in the "eat-malison" or cupboard.
She was frightened when she saw the figure in her room, and she could
not tell whether her visitor might not have made his entrance from the
contiguous churchyard. So, sitting bolt upright in her bed, her grey
hair almost lifting her kerchief off her head, and all over in "a fit
o' t' creepins," as she expressed it, she demanded:
"In God's name, what want ye thar?"
"Whar's the peppermint ye used to hev by ye, woman? I'm bad wi' an
inward pain."
"It's all gane a month sin'," she answered; and offered to make him a
"het" drink if he'd get to his room.
But he said:
"Never mind, I'll try a mouthful o' gin."
And, turning on his heel, he left her.
In the morning the sexton was gone. Not only in his lodging was there
no account of him, but, when inquiry began to be extended, nowhere in
the village of Golden Friars could he be found.
Still he might have gone off, on business of his own, to some distant
village, before the town was stirring; and the sexton had no near
kindred to trouble their heads about him.
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