They were very beautiful--Skelton stood looking down into their depth of colour.
It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had disturbed his senses.

It was true that his theory did not account for other instances of the same optical delusion to which the talk of the ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to attach much importance to his words.

He meditated on them now as he stood.
'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder." If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose.

I _can_ only interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what can I do?
And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single fact ?' So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of fire made by the chasm of cloud.

Then the earth moved onward into the night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.
The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on the road.