I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.

     "Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.

     I said so, and he took me down.

     "Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"

     "Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.

     "Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"

     At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms,--clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,--and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.