He had got about half-way, when, looking up,
he thought he saw, dim in the ghosty light of the moon, a speck upon the
track before him. He said to himself it could hardly be any one on the
moor at such a time of the night, and went on with his supper. Looking up
again after an interval, he saw that the object was much larger, but
hardly less vague, because of a light fog which had in the meantime
risen. By and by, however, as they drew nearer to each other, a strange
thrill of recognition went through him: on the way before him, which was
little better than a footpath, and slowly approaching, came what
certainly could be neither the horse that had carried him that day, nor
his double, but what was so like him in colour, size, and bone, while so
unlike him in muscle and bearing, that he might have been he, worn but
for his skin to a skeleton. Straight down upon John he came, spectral
through the fog, as if he were asleep, and saw nothing in his way. John
stepped aside to let him pass, and then first looked in the face of his
rider: with a shock of fear that struck him in the middle of the body,
making him gasp and choke, he saw before him--so plainly that, but
for the impossibility, he could have sworn to him in any court of
justice--the man whom he knew to be at that moment confined to his bed,
twenty miles away, with a broken arm. Sole other human being within sight
or sound in that still moonlight, on that desolate moor, the horseman
never lifted his head, never raised his eyes to look at him.
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