It Was
Inkpen's Turn To Chuckle Now; But She Chuckled Too Soon, And
Coombe, Running Out To Look, Found The Old Rotten Stump Of The
Gibbet Still In The Ground.
Hands off!
She cried. Here
stands a post, which you set up yourself, or which we put up
together and agreed that this should be the boundary line for
ever. Inkpen sneaked off to hide herself in her village, and
Coombe, determined to keep the subject in mind, set up a
brand-new stout gibbet in the place of the old rotting one.
That too decayed and fell to pieces in time, and the present
gibbet is therefore the third, and nobody has ever been hanged
on it. Coombe is rather proud of it, but I am not sure that
Inkpen is.
That was one of three strange events in the life of the
village which I heard: the other two must be passed by; they
would take long to tell and require a good pen to do them
justice. To me the best thing in or of the village was the
vicar himself, my put-upon host, a man of so blithe a nature,
so human and companionable, that when I, a perfect stranger
without an introduction or any excuse for such intrusion came
down like a wolf on his luncheon-table, he received me as if I
had been an old friend or one of his own kindred, and freely
gave up his time to me for the rest of that day.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 104 of 298
Words from 28210 to 28463
of 82198
