The Haunted Dragoon
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Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate — where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck — the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart’s-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish, for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which led to this are still a winter’s tale in the neighbourhood. I set them down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wre
