“She took something and went into the man’s room. Then I was frightened and sat up in bed, and I heard a sound as of a blow and nothing more. Presently aunt came back, and in the moonlight she saw me sitting up in bed. ‘Get up,’ she said; ‘go down stairs and get, if you can, a light.’ So I did and brought the rushlight up the ladder. Aunt had the Bible in her hand. ‘Swear,’ she said, ‘that you will never tell any one what has been done.’ So I swore, trembling, and wished I might go suddenly mad if I told. ‘Then,’ says she, ‘I’ve killed the lodger. His pockets were full of guineas, and I’m a made woman. But you must help me.’
“So she made me help to drag the body down into the room bellow and out in the garden, where we dug a hole under the cabbages and laid it as deep as we could. Then we covered all up and went back to the house and waited till daybreak. As soon as it was light we washed up the place, and nobody ever found out. One night, when I was a woman grown, the dead man came to my bedside and said, ‘Tell the story.’ and I said, ‘I cannot, because I swore.’ He said: ‘If you tell, you have sworn to go mad. If you do not tell. I will haunt you till you go mad.’
“So, as I am bound to go mad either way, I have written the story down and sewn it up. When I am dead somebody will find it and will dig up the poor man and bury him in a churchyard. The house is situated” * * *
