I rode away from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment,

and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I

did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed

from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed

tightly as if to assure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a

bright light like a torch, but no man carried it, and it crossed the

road and was away over the meadows, and no man whom I saw carried

it, and it waved in the wind like a torch streaming back, and I knew

it for a corpse candle. And that same night the man who dwelt in

that house was slain while pulling up the tobacco plants.

I rode fast, marvelling a little upon this strange sight, yet,

though marvelling, not afraid, for things that I understand not, and

that seem to savour of something outside the flesh, have always

rather aroused me to rage as of one who was approached by other than

the given rules of warfare rather than fear. I have always argued

that an apparition should attack only his own kind, and hath no

right to leave his own battlefield for ours, when we be at a

disadvantage by our lack of understanding as to weapons. So if I had

time I would have ridden after that corpse candle and gotten, if I

could, a sight of the bearer had he been fiend or spook, but I knew

that I had none to lose. So I rode on hard to Barry Upper Branch.

There was an air of mystery about the whole place that night, though

it were hard to see the use of it. Whereas, generally speaking,

there was a broad blazon of light from all the windows often to the

revealing of strange sights within, the shutters were closed, and

only by the lines of gold at top and bottom would one have known the

house was lit at all. And whereas there were always to be seen

horses standing openly before the porch, this night one knew there

were any about only by the sound of their distant stamping. And yet

this was the night when all mystery of plotting was to be resolved

into the wind of action.

I entered and found a great company assembled in the hall, and all

equipped with knives for the cutting of the tobacco plants, and

arms, for the militia, as was afterwards proved, was an uncertain

quantity. One minute the soldiers were for the government, when the

promises as to their pay were specious, and the next, when the pay

was not forthcoming, for the rioters, and there was no stability

either for the one cause or the other in them.




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