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gaslight to shine on them. I should have been a little scared to be there alone, afraid that the figure of Christ on the cross might come down and tell me how wicked I was. I thought that the pictures in the stained glass windows might come alive. There was a good deal of torturing in them and there was my old acquaintance St. Stephen up there, who seemed to have such a bad time on earth. Our footsteps rang out eerily on the stone flags.
    e shall have to hurry, Suewellyn,said Aunt Amelia. t will be quite dark very soon.
    We mounted the three stone steps to the altar.
    here!said Aunt Amelia. heyl make some sort of show. I think I had better put them in water. Here, Suewellyn, take this jar and fill it at the pump.
    I took it and ran out of the church. The graveyard was just outside. The gravestones looked like old men and women kneeling down, their faces hidden in gray hoods.
    The pump was a few yards from the church. To reach it I had to make my way past some of the oldest gravestones. I had read the inscriptions on them many times when we came out of church. People had been laid under them a long, long time ago. Some of the dates on them went back to the seventeenth century. I ran past them to the pump and vigorously began pumping the water and filling the pot.
    As I did so I heard a sudden footstep. I looked over my shoulder. It had grown darker since Aunt Amelia and I entered the church. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had the feeling that someone something was watching me.
    I turned back to the pump. One had to work hard to get the water and it wasn easy working the pump with one hand and holding the jar with the other.
    My hands were shaking. Don be silly, I said to myself. Why shouldn someone else come to the churchyard? Perhaps it was the vicar wife returning home to the vicarage or one of the devoted church workers who also had the idea of adorning the altar.
    I had filled the jar too full. I tipped a little water out. Then I heard the sound again. I gasped with horror. A figure was standing there among the gravestones. I was sure it was a ghost who had risen from the tomb.
    I gave a startled cry and ran as fast as I could to the church porch. The water in the jar slopped over and splashed down the front of my coat. But I had reached the sanctuary of the church.
    There I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder. I could see no one.
    Aunt Amelia was waiting impatiently at the altar.
    ome along, come along,she said.
    I handed the jar to her. My hands were wet and cold and I was shivering.
    here not enough here,she scolded. hy, you careless girl, youe spilled it.
    I stood firmly. t dark out there,I said stubbornly. Nothing would have induced me to go back to the pump.
    suppose it will have to do,she said grudgingly. uewellyn, I don know why you can do things properly.
    She arranged the leaves and we left the church. I kept very close to her as we crossed the graveyard and came out to the green.
    ot what I should have liked for the altar,said Aunt Amelia. ut theyl have to do.
    I could not sleep that night. I kept dozing and thinking I was at the pump in the graveyard. I imagined the ghost starting up from the ground and coming out to frighten people. It had certainly frightened me. I had always thought of ghosts as misty white transparent beings. When I came to think of it, as far as the gloom and my fear would allow me, this one had been fully dressed. It was a man, a very tall man in a shiny black hat. I hadn had time to notice very much else about him except the steadiness of his gaze. And that had been directed straight at me.
    At last I slept and so deeply that I awoke late next morning.
    Aunt Amelia surveyed me with a grim expression when I went down to breakfast. She had not given me a call. She never did. I was supposed to wake at the right time myself and get to school at the appointed hour. It was something to do with Discipline, for which Aunt Amelia had as great a reverence as she had for