Madam Crowls Ghost and the Dead Sexton

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Madam Crowl's Ghost and the
Dead Sexton

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Sexton
by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton
Author: Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Release Date: March 17, 2004 [EBook #11610]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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CROWL'S GHOST / DEAD SEXTON ***

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MADAM CROWL'S GHOST and THE DEAD SEXTON
By
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

Both stories were originally published in 1871.

CONTENTS
Madam Crowl's Ghost
The Dead Sexton

MADAM CROWL'S GHOST
Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs. Jolliffe's tall slim
figure. She is now past seventy, and can't have many mile-stones more
to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair
has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd,
but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and
active.
She has taken of late years to the care of adult invalids, having
surrendered to younger hands the little people who inhabit cradles, and
crawl on all-fours. Those who remember that good-natured face among
the earliest that emerge from the darkness of non-entity, and who owe
to their first lessons in the accomplishment of walking, and a delighted
appreciation of their first babblings and earliest teeth, have "spired up"
into tall lads and lasses, now. Some of them shew streaks of white by
this time, in brown locks, "the bonny gouden" hair, that she was so
proud to brush and shew to admiring mothers, who are seen no more on
the green of Golden Friars, and whose names are traced now on the flat

grey stones in the church-yard.
So the time is ripening some, and searing others; and the saddening and
tender sunset hour has come; and it is evening with the kind old
north-country dame, who nursed pretty Laura Mildmay, who now
stepping into the room, smiles so gladly, and throws her arms round the
old woman's neck, and kisses her twice.
"Now, this is so lucky!" said Mrs. Jenner, "you have just come in time
to hear a story."
"Really! That's delightful."
"Na, na, od wite it! no story, ouer true for that, I sid it a wi my aan eyen.
But the barn here, would not like, at these hours, just goin' to her bed,
to hear tell of freets and boggarts."
"Ghosts? The very thing of all others I should most likely to hear of."
"Well, dear," said Mrs. Jenner, "if you are not afraid, sit ye down here,
with us."
"She was just going to tell me all about her first engagement to attend a
dying old woman," says Mrs. Jenner, "and of the ghost she saw there.
Now, Mrs. Jolliffe, make your tea first, and then begin."
The good woman obeyed, and having prepared a cup of that
companionable nectar, she sipped a little, drew her brows slightly
together to collect her thoughts, and then looked up with a wondrous
solemn face to begin.
Good Mrs. Jenner, and the pretty girl, each gazed with eyes of solemn
expectation in the face of the old woman, who seemed to gather awe
from the recollections she was summoning.
The old room was a good scene for such a narrative, with the
oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that
crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within

which you might imagine what shadows you please.
Mrs. Jolliffe cleared her voice, rolled her eyes slowly round, and began
her tale in these words:--
MADAM CROWL'S GHOST
"I'm an ald woman now, and I was but thirteen, my last birthday, the
night I came to Applewale House. My aunt was the housekeeper there,
and a sort o' one-horse carriage was down at Lexhoe waitin' to take me
and my box up to Applewale.
"I was a bit frightened by the time I got to Lexhoe, and when I saw the
carriage and horse, I wished myself back again with my mother at
Hazelden. I was crying when I got into the 'shay'--that's what we used
to call it--and old John Mulbery that drove it, and was a good-natured
fellow, bought me a handful of apples at the Golden Lion to cheer me
up a bit; and he told me that there was a currant-cake, and