Bunker Hill, Charles River, and Boston town, on the well-remembered
night of the 16th of June. The same season; the same moon; the same
new-mown hay on the shaven sward; hay which was scraped together during
the night to help pack into the redoubt so hurriedly thrown up.

Acted on as if by enchantment, Israel sat down on one of the cocks, and
gave himself up to reverie. But, worn out by long loss of sleep, his
reveries would have soon merged into slumber's still wilder dreams, had
he not rallied himself, and departed on his way, fearful of forgetting
himself in an emergency like the present. It now occurred to him that,
well as his disguise had served him in escaping from the mansion of
Squire Woodcock, that disguise might fatally endanger him if he should
be discovered in it abroad. He might pass for a ghost at night, and
among the relations and immediate friends of the gentleman deceased; but
by day, and among indifferent persons, he ran no small risk of being
apprehended for an entry-thief. He bitterly lamented his omission in not
pulling on the Squire's clothes over his own, so that he might now have
reappeared in his former guise.

As meditating over this difficulty, he was passing along, suddenly he
saw a man in black standing right in his path, about fifty yards
distant, in a field of some growing barley or wheat. The gloomy stranger
was standing stock-still; one outstretched arm, with weird intimation
pointing towards the deceased Squire's abode. To the brooding soul of
the now desolate Israel, so strange a sight roused a supernatural
suspicion. His conscience morbidly reproaching him for the terrors he
had bred in making his escape from the house, he seemed to see in the
fixed gesture of the stranger something more than humanly significant.
But somewhat of his intrepidity returned; he resolved to test the
apparition. Composing itself to the same deliberate stateliness with