“But I do believe you. What about the red lamp?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s pretty well known about these parts that that lamp ain’t healthy. Some say one thing and some say another, but most folks is agreed on that.”
“Still, I don’t see how it could kill sheep, do you?”
And even now I do not distinctly see the connection. I imagine the local belief is that the lamp exerts some malign influence, possibly even that it liberates some sinister spirit. Not, I imagine, that this is ever put into words. The nearest they come to that is the statement that the lamp is not “healthy,” and that “George” has come back.
At least that is all that I can make out of that strange mixture of hysteria, superstitious fears and local mishaps to which Thomas gave birth in the next ten minutes or so. It began wi
