Doctor Syn by Russell Thorndike — Read

"Nothing happened, sir, for some hour or so after you left, and then things made up for lost time, as 'twere, and came fast and quick. I was sitting outside this here room with the door on the jar -- outside I was, 'cos I couldn't bear the sight of that schoolmaster's face. I think you'll own yourself, sir, that it wasn't just exactly wot you might call ‘a pleasant evening face' especially, a-battered about as it was. Poor Bill Spiker and Morgan Walters here was asleep downstairs, for we'd agreed that I should stand first watch.

"Well, the boys had brought us over our allowance of rum from the barn, and we'd all had a drop, though I kept most of mine to the end of my watch, thinking to use it for a nightcap, as 'twere, but the little drop I did get was making me feel very drowsy, and I began to think the next hour would never go, when I could wake up Bill Spiker. Presently I hears a noise of galloping horses. I goes to the window on the stairs there, and looks out. Right along the road I could see those same riders with lit-up faces wot I'd seed the night before last. I know it was them, 'cos I could see their faces, you understand, when quite sudden I was seized from behind and pulled over backwards down the stairs. I fought the best I could, but there was a sort of overpowering smell upon a kerchief wot had been pulled over my mouth, and I was lifted up on four men's shoulders, as it seemed. I couldn't see anything of their faces, but as I went up the stairway on their shoulders I just remember a-seein' that schoolmaster a-comin' down in the same fashion as I was a-goin' up, only that he only required two to hold him. Now, whether this was because I was heavier, I don't know, or whether 'cos he was only a-comin' down while I was a-goin' up, or whether the things wot had got hold of me was real or sham, as 'twere, but certain am I the two things wot had the schoolmaster -- and things I must call 'em, though they was a bit like men -- had got the same shiny faces all alight, just like wot them demon riders had; and then I don't remember nothing else till I was woke up by hearin' a sort of horrible shriek downstairs which I thought was just a dream, but now suppose was poor Bill a-voicin' his last opinion in this world, as 'twere. After that I went to sleep again; then I was waked up again by a sort of groanin', which I finds was myself, and then in comes you after a long time and lets me go, as 'twere, and that's all I knows, so help me God, sir; but quite enough for one night, as I thinks you'll agree."