"As for that," my grandfather answers, "I only wish I could say yes
or no: for 'twould be a relief even to know the worst." He beckoned
very mysterious-like and led the Parson a couple of hundred yards up
the foreshore, with Arch'laus Spry following. And there they came to
a halt, all three, before a rock that someone had been daubing with
whitewash. On the top of the cliff, right above, was planted a stick
with a little white flag.
"Now, Sir, as a Justice of the Peace, what d'ee think of it?"
Parson Polwhele stared from the rock to the stick and couldn't say.
So he turns to Arch'laus Spry and asks: "Any person taken ill in your
parish?"
"No, Sir."
"You're sure Billy Johns hasn't been drinking again?" Billy Johns
was the landlord of the "Passage Inn," a very ordinary man by rule,
but given to breaking loose among his own liquors. "He seemed all
right yesterday when I hired the trap off him; but he does the most
unaccountable things when he's taken bad."
"He never did anything so far out of nature as this here; and I can
mind him in six outbreaks," answered my grandfather. "Besides, 'tis
not Billy Johns nor anyone like him.
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