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screwed up as if to keep in some bit of intelligence bursting to come forth.

"So, my lad, you 've found them!" But Joe shook his head, put his hand in his jacket-pocket, dived, and fumbled long, as though on purpose to keep us on the tenter-hooks of curiosity, and at last drew forth a-something-coated with the river mud, from which it had been just exhumed. It proved to be an iron hand,—a small rusty gauntlet, in which something rattled loosely as Joe threw it on the table.

"Oh! it's Sir Timothy's!—the very same," screamed Tim, stretching forward to take it, then recoiling as if with terror.

Without his superstitious awe, but with an interest and curiosity other certainly than merely antiquarian, we took it up for our own examination. It was undoubtedly an iron gauntlet, of the same style and fashion as the suit of armour represented in Sir Timothy's monumental effigy ; and, although the metal was nearly eaten through with rust, part of a skeleton hand of the smallest possible masculine proportions yet remained within.

The discovery of this ancient relic was at least a curious coincidence, following as a sequel on Tim's tale; and the discovery itself was followed up by a further one near the same spot (by the river-side and under the stump of alder) of other corresponding pieces of armour, with other of their wearer's bones. This looked certainly much like a verification of the legend of the Tomkins' Tomb, and seemed no less a confirmation of Tim's

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INTERMENT OF BONES AND TROUBLES.

dream, and his dreamy chase, led by the phantom light; at least Tim, you may be sure, thought so; and when (as was fitting) the discovered bones, whether of the little knight or of some other little man, were duly deposited in the churchyard, the namesake of Sir Timothy verily believed that he had been made the happy instrument of giving rest to his wandering spirit. Let this have been as it may, there was no denying but that from the hour nearly of young Tomkins' birth there had been kept up a strange sort of connection between the defunct knight and his namesake of low degree; and even still it seemed existent, for with the poor remains (supposed) of Sir Timothy seemed interred the worst troubles of Tim.

His bodily frame continued, of course, weak, his constitution feeble, and all might read in his prematurely aged face that he was not likely to reach the full age of man—he had had already the days of "labour and sorrow" which are usually appended to our three-score years and ten. Yet from that memorable night of the longest day, when he followed the single "corpse light," as if it were the star of his destiny, even to the brink of destruction, his hitherto dark and gloomy and solitary life became comparatively bright and social. "Tall Joe," his preserver, continued, ever after, his warm friend and sturdy protector whensoever needed, and became his fellowlodger, with the good woman who had nursed him through his illness, and who afterwards tenanted Dame Huggins' cottage. The fund furnished by that worthy's compensatory

BRIGHTER DAYS FOR TIM.

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bequest, with the small remainder of his monumental legacy, was kept up by occasional work at his old employ, and, subsequently, by the profits of a little day-school, which, with some unrequited labour, brought him also pleasures he had never known. From an object of the children's dislike and fear, he came, as they knew him better, to be one of their respect and love; and this opened his heart to feelings more connected with the sympathies of life, more youthful, too, than ever had been his in his own childish, but most unchildlike days when his first ideas, his earliest instruction, even his scanty recreations, were all connected with inmates of the "narrow house," and derived from one of its keepers. Instead of his spectral visits to the churchyard, when only the owls and bats and beetles were on wing, under the cold blighting moonbeams, he loved, when his daily employ was ended, or before it was begun, to seek the woods and meadows, to drink draughts of life in the morning air, and take warm baths in the summer sunset.

But let it not be thought that when "Tombstone Tim" became thus numbered with the living, he ever forgot his reverence of, or duties to, the dead. Amidst the general neglect which pervaded our churchyard, Tim's labours of love were always conspicuously visible upon the three humble sods where rested his parents and grandfather, the old sexton, whose example and last injunction he failed not to follow by the most scrupulous attention to the Tomkins' Tomb.

76

A LIGHT ON IGNES FATUI.

"A strange tale!" say our readers. "We don't believe a word of it." Perhaps not; but, after all, there's nothing so very strange about it, except a little strange coincidence, such as occurs too often to deserve the appellation.

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"But the strange light?" What then? Who has not seen or heard of ignes fatui-Jack o' Lantern and his hundred cousins? Well, but what have Jack o' Lanterns to do with insects?" More, perhaps, than you think of. And now read the following passage, "whereby hangs our tale," and which may serve, moreover, with those who have not read it before, to cast one new light, amongst various others, on Jack o' Lanterns in general, as well as that in particular of "Tombstone Tim."

It is related by Mr. Kirby, that to a friend of his, then (in 1780) a curate in Cambridgeshire, a Mole-Cricket* was once brought by a farmer, who informed him that one of his people, seeing a Jack o' Lantern, pursued it, and knocked downthe insect in question. An ignis fatuus is also described by Derham as seen flitting, insect-like, about a thistle, a corroborate observation as to the nature, in some instances, of such a light.

The luminosity of the mole-cricket not being generally known, is no proof of its non-existence, other light-bearing insects being capricious and uncertain in the illumination of their lanterns. The mole-cricket is altogether a very curious

*Gryllotalpa vulgaris.

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creature, and it is recommended by the naturalist Curtis, to those who are fond of petting" mice and such small gear," that they should rather keep some of these singular insects, with a probability of being rewarded for their pains by some interesting discovery as to their imperfectly-known economy, perhaps, also, as to the above point of their supposed luminosity. We might literally behold in it "a meteor tamed," and thus assign to it, with certainty, a place among other natural causes which help to elucidate those wandering lights which have led astray both philosopher and fool. This singular cricket is common in some counties of England, especially Hants and Wilts; and its structure, with what is known of its economy, furnish one amongst instances without number, of admirable adaptation of means to purposed ends.

The mole-cricket is, as its name imports, an extensive, and, where found in kitchen-gardens, a destructive burrower,working underground like a field-mouse, and throwing up ridges, though no hillocks, like the mole. To fit him for this subterranean mode of progression, he is furnished with a chest powerful as a battering-ram, aided by fore feet like those of a mole, hand-shaped, and mailed like a warrior's glove. His wing-cases are small, but a pair of ample wings enable him to cleave the air as well as earth; and to the above powers he adds, in the opinion of Curtis, that of cleaving the waters also-swimming by the resistance of the wing

* See Vignette.

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