THE WOULDBEGOODS
We asked was it a church then, or not.
"Church?" he said. "Not it. It's more of a tombstone, from all I can make out. They do say there was a curse on him that built it, and he wasn't to rest in earth or sea. So he's buried half-way up the tower—if you can call it buried."
"Can you go up it?" Oswald asked.
"Lord love you! yes; a fine view from the top, they say. I've never been up myself, though I've lived in sight of it, boy and man, these sixty-three years come harvest."
Alice asked whether you had to go past the dead and buried person to get to the top of the tower, and could you see the coffin.
"No, no," the man said; "that's all hid away behind a slab of stone, that is, with reading on it. You've no call to be afraid, missy. It's daylight all the way up. But I wouldn't go there after dark, so I wouldn't. It's always open, day and night, and they say tramps sleep there now and again. Any one who likes can sleep there, but it wouldn't be me."
We thought that it would not be us either, but we wanted to go more than ever, especially when the man said:
"My own great-uncle of the mother's side, he was one of the masons that set up the stone slab. Before then it was thick glass, and you could see the dead man lying inside, as he'd left it in his will. He was lying there in a glass coffin with his best clothes—blue satin and silver, my uncle said, such as was all the go in his day, with his wig on,
74
