I put my school bag in my room and dutifully went downstairs. We crossed the green to the church.

There was a hushed silence there. The stained glass windows looked different without the sun or even the gaslight to shine on them. I should have been a little scared to be there alone, afraid that the figure of Christ on the cross might come down and tell me how wicked I was. I thought that the pictures in the stained glass windows might come alive. There was a good deal of torturing in them and there was my old acquaintance St. Stephen up there, who seemed to have such a bad time on earth. Our footsteps rang out eerily on the stone flags.

"We shall have to hurry, Suewellyn," said Aunt Amelia. "It will be quite dark very soon."

We mounted the three stone steps to the altar.

"There!" said Aunt Amelia. "They'll make some sort of show. I think I had better put them in water. Here, Suewellyn, take this jar and fill it at the pump."

I took it and ran out of the church. The graveyard was just outside. The gravestones looked like old men and women kneeling down, their faces hidden in gray hoods.

The pump was a few yards from the church. To reach it I had to make my way past some of the oldest gravestones. I had read the inscriptions on them many times when we came out of church. People had been laid under them a long, long time ago. Some of the dates on them went back to the seventeenth century. I ran past them to the pump and vigorously began pumping the water and filling the pot.

As I did so I heard a sudden footstep. I looked over my shoulder. It had grown darker since Aunt Amelia and I entered the church. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had the feeling that someone ... something was watching me.

I turned back to the pump. One had to work hard to get the water and it wasn't easy working the pump with one hand and holding the jar with the other.

My hands were shaking. Don't be silly, I said to myself. Why shouldn't someone else come to the churchyard? Perhaps it was the vicar's wife returning home to the vicarage or one of the devoted church workers who also had the idea of adorning the altar.

I had filled the jar too full. I tipped a little water out. Then I heard the sound again. I gasped with horror. A figure was standing there among the gravestones. I was sure it was a ghost who had risen from the tomb.

I gave a startled cry and ran as fast as I could to the church porch. The water in the jar slopped over and splashed down the front of my coat. But I had reached the sanctuary of the church.

There I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder. I could see no one.

Aunt Amelia was waiting impatiently at the altar.

"Come along, come along," she said.

I handed the jar to her. My hands were wet and cold and I was shivering.

"There's not enough here," she scolded. "Why, you careless girl, you've spilled it."

I stood firmly. "It's dark out there," I said stubbornly. Nothing would have induced me to go back to the pump.

"I suppose it will have to do," she said grudgingly. "Suewellyn, I don't know why you can't do things properly."

She arranged the leaves and we left the church. I kept very close to her as we crossed the graveyard and came out to the green.

"Not what I should have liked for the altar," said Aunt Amelia. "But they'll have to do."

I could not sleep that night. I kept dozing and thinking I was at the pump in the graveyard. I imagined the ghost starting up from the ground and coming out to frighten people. It had certainly frightened me. I had always thought of ghosts as misty white transparent beings. When I came to think of it, as far as the gloom and my fear would allow me, this one had been fully dressed. It was a man, a very tall man in a shiny black hat. I hadn't had time to notice very much else about him except the steadiness of his gaze. And that had been directed straight at me.

At last I slept and so deeply that I awoke late next morning.

Aunt Amelia surveyed me with a grim expression when I went down to breakfast. She had not given me a call. She never did. I was supposed to wake at the right time myself and get to school at the appointed hour. It was something to do with Discipline, for which Aunt Amelia had as great a reverence as she had for Respectability.

I was, consequently, late for school and Miss Brent, who believed the teaching of the necessity of Punctuality was as important as the three Rs, said that if I could not come on time I should stay behind for half an hour and write out the Creed before I left school.

It would mean, of course, that I shouldn't have time to call on Matty.

The day passed and at three o'clock I was seated at my desk writing out "I believe in God the Father ..." and when I came to "conceived" saying the little rhyme to myself, "I before E except after C," and I had finished it in twenty minutes. I then took it to Miss Brent's sitting room upstairs, knocked on the door and handed it to her. She glanced through it, nodded and said: "You'd better be quick. You'll be home before dark. And, Suewellyn, do try to be on time. It's bad manners not to be."

I said: "Yes, Miss Brent," very meekly and ran off.

If I took the short cut across the churchyard, which would save a few minutes, I might just have time to look in on Matty and tell her about the ghost I had seen in the churchyard on the previous day. If I were late home I could tell Aunt Amelia I had been kept in to write "I believe." She would nod grimly and show her approval of Miss Brent's action.

To go across the churchyard after the previous day's experience seemed a little strange. But it was typical of me—and perhaps this goes a little way to explain what happened later—that the fact of my fear gave the churchyard special fascination for me. It was not quite dark. It had been a brighter day than yesterday and the sun was a great red ball on the horizon. I was afraid; I was tingling with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, but somehow I felt myself drawn almost involuntarily to the churchyard.

As soon as I entered it I called myself stupid for coming. Fear took a firm grip of me and I had a great desire to turn and run. But I wouldn't. I would skirt the ancient part and make my way among the whiter stones whose inscriptions had not yet been obliterated by time and weather.

I was being followed. I knew it. I could hear the footsteps behind me. I started to run. Whoever was behind me was hurrying too.

How foolish of me to have come here. I was playing some game of bravado with myself. I had had my warning yesterday. How scared I had been then and Aunt Amelia had not been far away. I would only have had to get to her. And yet I had come back ... alone.

I could see the gray walls of the church. Whoever was following me was faster than I. It... he ... was right at my heels.

I looked at the church door. I remembered hearing something about churches being a sanctuary because they were holy places. Evil spirits could not exist there.

I hesitated at the door of the church ... whether to go in or run?

A hand reached out and touched me.

I gave a little gasp.

"What's the matter, little girl?" said a musical and very friendly voice. "There's nothing to be afraid of, you know."

I swung round and faced him.

He was a very tall man and I noticed the black hat which he had worn yesterday. He was smiling. His eyes were dark brown and his face was not a bit as I imagined a ghost's would be. It was a living man who confronted me. He took off his hat and bowed.

"I only wanted to talk to you," he went on.

"You were in the graveyard yesterday," I accused.

"Yes," he said. "I like graveyards. I like reading the inscriptions on the tombs, do you?"

I did, but I said nothing. I was trembling with fear.

"That pump was a bit stiff, wasn't it?" he went on. "I was coming to help you with it. You needed one to hold the jar while the other pumped. Don't you agree?"

"Yes," I said.

"Show me the church, will you? I'm interested in old churches."

"I have to get home," I told him. "I'm late."

"Yes, later than the others. Why?"

"I was kept in ... to write the Creed."

"'I believe in God the Father.' Do you believe, little girl?"

"Of course I believe. Everybody believes."

"Do they? Then you know God will watch over you and protect you from all dangers and perils of the night ... even strangers in graveyards. Come along ... just for a moment. Show me the church. I believe they are rather proud of their stained glass windows here."

"The vicar is," I replied. "They have been written about. He has a lot of cuttings. You can see them if you like. He would show them to you."

He was still holding my arm and drawing me towards the church door. He glanced cursorily at the notices in the porch about the various meetings.

I felt better inside the church. That air of sanctity restored my courage. I felt nothing terrible could happen here with the golden cross, and the stained glass windows portraying the life of Jesus in lovely reds, blues and gold.

"It's a beautiful church," he said.

"Yes, but I must go. The vicar will show you round."

"In a moment. And I had better see it in daylight."

"It will soon be dark," I said, "and I ..."

"Yes, you must be home by dark. What is your name?"

"Suewellyn," I told him.

"That's a pretty and unusual name. What else?"

"Suewellyn Campion."

He nodded as though my name pleased him.