The footpad hiding in a ditch had marked him passing like a ghost along its brink; the vagrant had met him on the dark high-road; the beggar had seen him pause upon the bridge to look down at the water, and then sweep on again; they who dealt in bodies with the surgeons could swear he slept in churchyards, and that they had beheld him glide away among the tombs on their approach.

And as they told these stories to each other, one who had looked about him would pull his neighbour by the sleeve, and there he would be among them.
At last, one man--he was one of those whose commerce lay among the graves--resolved to question this strange companion.

Next night, when he had eat his poor meal voraciously (he was accustomed to do that, they had observed, as though he had no other in the day), this fellow sat down at his elbow.
'A black night, master!' 'It is a black night.' 'Blacker than last, though that was pitchy too.

Didn't I pass you near the turnpike in the Oxford Road ?' 'It's like you may.

I don't know.' 'Come, come, master,' cried the fellow, urged on by the looks of his comrades, and slapping him on the shoulder; 'be more companionable and communicative.