In my dream I was still awake, and still watching for my uncle's return.
I heard the sound of Death's hoofs, not on the stones of the yard, but on
the gravel before the house, and coming round the house till under my
window. There he stopped, and I heard my uncle call to me to come down:
he wanted me. In my dream I was a child; I sprang out of bed, ran from
the house on my bare feet, jumped into his down-stretched arms, and was
in a moment seated in front of him. Death gave a great plunge, and went
off like the wind, cleared the gate in a flying stride, and rushed up
the hill to the heath. The wind was blowing behind us furiously: I could
hear it roaring, but did not feel it, for it could not overtake us; we
out-stripped and kept ahead of it; if for a moment we slackened speed, it
fell upon us raging.
We came at length to the pool near the heart of the heath, and I wondered
that, at the speed we were making, we had been such a time in reaching
it. It was the dismalest spot, with its crumbling peaty banks, and its
water brown as tea. Tradition declared it had no bottom--went down into
nowhere.
"Here," said my uncle, bringing his horse to a sudden halt, "we had a
terrible battle once, Death and I, with the worm that lives in this hole.
You know what worm it is, do you not?"
I had heard of the worm, and any time I happened, in galloping about the
heath, to find myself near the pool, the thought would always come back
with a fresh shudder--what if the legend were a true one, and the worm
was down there biding his time! but anything more about the worm I had
never heard.
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