“So you have stolen a march upon us this morning, my dear general,” said Lord Woodville; “or you have not found your bed so much to your mind as I had hoped and you seemed to expect. How did you rest last night?”

“Oh, excellently well! remarkably well! never better in my life”—said General Browne rapidly, and yet with an air of embarrassment which was obvious to his friend. He then hastily swallowed a cup of tea, and, neglecting or refusing whatever else was offered, seemed to fall into a fit of abstraction.

“You will take the gun to-day, general?” said his friend and host, but had to repeat the question twice ere he received the abrupt answer, “No, my lord; I am sorry I cannot have the honour of spending another day with your lordship: my post horses are ordered, and will be here directly.”

All who were present showed surprise, and Lord Woodville immediately replied, “Post horses, my good friend! what can you possibly want with them, when you promised to stay with me quietly for at least a week?”

“I believe,” said the general, obviously much embarrassed, “that I might, in the pleasure of my first meeting with your lordship, have said something about stopping here a few days; but I have since found it altogether impossible.”

“That is very extraordinary,” answered the young nobleman. “You seemed quite disengaged yesterday, and you cannot have had a summons to-day; for our post has not come up from the town, and therefore you cannot have received any letters.”

General Browne, without giving any further explanation, muttered something of indispensable business, and insisted on the absolute necessity of his departure in a manner which silenced all opposition on the part of his host, who saw that his resolution was taken, and forbore all further importunity.

“At least, however,” he said, “permit me, my dear Browne, since go you will or must, to show you the view from the terrace, which the mist, that is now rising, will soon display.”

He threw open a sash-window, and stepped down upon the terrace as he spoke. The general followed him mechanically, but seemed little to attend to what his host was saying, as, looking across an extended and rich prospect, he pointed out the different objects worthy of observation. Thus they moved on till Lord Woodville had attained his purpose of drawing his guest entirely apart from the rest of the company, when, turning round upon him with an air of great solemnity, he addressed him thus:

“Richard Browne, my old and very dear friend, we are now alone. Let me conjure you to answer me upon the word of a friend, and the honour of a soldier. How did you in reality rest during last night?”

“Most wretchedly indeed, my lord,” answered the general, in the same tone of solemnity;—“so miserably, that I would not run the risk of such a second night, not only for all the lands belonging to this castle, but for all the country which I see from this elevated point of view.”

“This is most extraordinary,” said the young lord, as if speaking to himself; “then there must be something in the reports concerning that apartment.” Again turning to the general, he said, “For God’s sake, my dear friend, be candid with me, and let me know the disagreeable particulars which have befallen you under a roof where, with consent of the owner, you should have met nothing save comfort.”

The general seemed distressed by this appeal, and paused a moment before he replied. “My dear lord,” he at length said, “what happened to me last night is of a nature so peculiar and so unpleasant, that I could hardly bring myself to detail it even to your lordship, were it not that, independent of my wish to gratify any request of yours, I think that sincerity on my part may lead to some explanation about a circumstance equally painful and mysterious. To others, the communication I am about to make, might place me in the light of a weak-minded, superstitious fool, who suffered his own imagination to delude and bewilder him; but you have known me in childhood and youth, and will not suspect me of having adopted in manhood, the feelings and frailties from which my early years were free.” Here he paused, and his friend replied:

“Do not doubt my perfect confidence in the truth of your communication, however strange it may be,” replied Lord Woodville; “I know your firmness of disposition too well, to suspect you could be made the object of imposition, and am aware that your honour and your friendship will equally deter you from exaggerating whatever you may have witnessed.”

“Well then,” said the general, “I will proceed with my story as well as I can, relying upon your candour; and yet distinctly feeling that I would rather face a battery than recall to my mind the odious recollections of last night.”

He paused a second time, and then perceiving that Lord Woodville remained silent and in an attitude of attention, he commenced, though not without obvious reluctance, the history of his night adventures in the Tapestried Chamber.

“I undressed and went to bed, so soon as your lordship left me yesterday evening; but the wood in the chimney, which nearly fronted my bed, blazed brightly and cheerfully, and, aided by a hundred exciting recollections of my childhood and youth, which had been recalled by the unexpected pleasure of meeting your lordship, prevented me from falling immediately asleep. I ought, however, to say, that these reflections were all of a pleasant and agreeable kind, grounded on a sense of having for a time exchanged the labour, fatigues, and dangers of my profession, for the enjoyments of a peaceful life, and the reunion of those friendly and affectionate ties, which I had torn asunder at the rude summons of war.

“While such pleasing reflections were stealing over my mind, and gradually lulling me to slumber, I was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the apartment. Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the fire. The back of this form was turned to me, and I could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which, I think, ladies call a sacque; that is, a sort of robe completely loose in the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and shoulders, which fall down to the ground, and terminate in a species of train.

“I thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harboured for a moment the idea that what I saw was any thing more than the mortal form of some old woman about the establishment, who had a fancy to dress like her grandmother, and who, having perhaps (as your lordship mentioned that you were rather straitened for room) been dislodged from her chamber for my accommodation, had forgotten the circumstance, and returned by twelve, to her old haunt. Under this persuasion I moved myself in bed and coughed a little, to make the intruder sensible of my being in possession of the premises.—She turned slowly round, but, gracious heaven! my lord, what a countenance did she display to me! There was no longer any question what she was, or any thought of her being a living being. Upon a face which wore the fixed features of a corpse were imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous passions which had animated her while she lived. The body of some atrocious criminal seemed to have been given up from the grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in order to form, for a space, an union with the ancient accomplice of its guilt. I started up in bed, and sat upright, supporting myself on my palms, as I gazed on this horrible spectre. The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay, and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude which I had assumed in the extremity of my horror, advancing her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend.”

Here General Browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision had covered it.

“My lord,” he said, “I am no coward. I have been in all the mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast, that no man ever saw Richard Browne dishonour the sword he wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually bristle. The current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and I sank back in a swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village girl, or a child of ten years old. How long I lay in this condition I cannot pretend to guess.

“But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it seemed as if it were in the very room. It was some time before I dared open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle. When, however, I summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible. My first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hay-loft, to be ensured against a second visitation. Nay, I will confess the truth, that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by the fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still lurking about some corner of the apartment.

“I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. An hundred terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great difference betwixt the vision which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves.

“Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health, and humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and still more so, at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, I made my escape from your lordship’s mansion, to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous system, shaken as it was by this horrible rencounter with a visitant, for such I must believe her, from the other world. Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomposure, and of my sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other places I trust we may often meet; but God protect me from ever spending a second night under that roof!”

Strange as the general’s tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of conviction, that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain apparitions,—wild vagaries of the fancy, or deception of the optic nerves. On the contrary, he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause, regretted, with much appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have suffered so severely.

“I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne,” he continued, “that it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my own. You must know, that for my father and grandfather’s time, at least, the apartment which was assigned to you last night, had been shut on account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises. When I came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought the accommodation, which the castle afforded for my friends, was not extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment. I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be opened; and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such new articles of furniture placed in it as became the more modern times. Yet as the opinion that the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was also known in the neighbourhood and to many of my friends, I feared some prejudice might be entertained by the first occupant of the Tapestried Chamber, which might tend to revive the evil report which it had laboured under, and so disappoint my purpose of rendering it an useful part of the house. I must confess, my dear Browne, that your arrival yesterday, agreeable to me for a thousand reasons besides, seemed the most favourable opportunity of removing the unpleasant rumours which attached to the room, since your courage was indubitable, and your mind free of any pre-occupation on the subject. I could not, therefore, have chosen a more fitting subject for my experiment.”

“Upon my life,” said General Browne, somewhat hastily, “I am infinitely obliged to your lordship—very particularly indebted indeed. I am likely to remember for some time the consequences of the experiment, as your lordship is pleased to call it.”

“Nay, now you are unjust, my dear friend,” said Lord Woodville. “You have only to reflect for a single moment, in order to be convinced that I could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed. I was yesterday morning a complete sceptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. Nay, I am sure that had I told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. It was my misfortune, perhaps my error, but really cannot be termed my fault, that you have been afflicted so strangely.”

“Strangely indeed!” said the general, resuming his good temper; “and I acknowledge that I have no right to be offended with your lordship for treating me like what I used to think myself—a man of some firmness and courage.—But I see my post horses are arrived, and I must not detain your lordship from your amusement.”

“Nay, my old friend,” said Lord Woodville, “since you cannot stay with us another day, which, indeed, I can no longer urge, give me at least half an hour more. You used to love pictures, and I have a gallery of portraits, some of them by Vandyke, representing ancestry to whom this property and castle formerly belonged. I think that several of them will strike you as possessing merit.”

General Browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat unwillingly. It was evident he was not to breathe freely or at ease, till he left Woodville Castle far behind him. He could not refuse his friend’s invitation, however; and the less so, that he was a little ashamed of the peevishness which he had displayed towards his well-meaning entertainer.

The general, therefore, followed Lord Woodville through several rooms, into a long gallery hung with pictures, which the latter pointed out to his guest, telling the names, and giving some account of the personages whose portraits presented themselves in progression. General Browne was but little interested in the details which these accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed, of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery. Here, was a cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause; there, a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match with a wealthy round-head. There, hung a gallant who had been in danger for corresponding with the exiled court at Saint Germain’s; here, one who had taken arms for William at the revolution; and there, a third that had thrown his weight alternately into the scale of whig and tory.

While Lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest’s ear, “against the stomach of his sense,” they gained the middle of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear, as his eyes were caught and suddenly riveted by a portrait of an old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the seventeenth century.

“There she is!” he exclaimed, “there she is, in form and features, though inferior in demoniac expression to, the accursed hag who visited me last night.”

“If that be the case,” said the young nobleman, “there can remain no longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition. That is the picture of a wretched ancestress of mine, of whose crimes a black and fearful catalogue is recorded in a family history in my charter-chest. The recital of them would be too horrible: it is enough to say, that in yon fatal apartment incest, and unnatural murder, were committed. I will restore it to the solitude to which the better judgment of those who preceded me had consigned it; and never shall any one, so long as I can prevent it, be exposed to a repetition of the supernatural horrors which could shake such courage as yours.”

Thus the friends, who had met with such glee, parted in a very different mood; Lord Woodville to command the tapestried chamber to be unmantled, and the door built up; and General Browne to seek in some less beautiful country, and with some less dignified friend, forgetfulness of the painful night which he had passed in Woodville Castle.

As winter drew on, and the days grew shorter, I was sometimes almost certain that I heard a noise as if some one was playing on the great organ in the hall. I did not hear it every evening; but, certainly, I did very often; usually when I was sitting with Miss Rosamond, after I had put her to bed, and keeping quite still and silent in the bed-room. Then I used to hear it booming and swelling away in the distance. The first night, when I went down to my supper, I asked Dorothy who had been playing music, and James said very shortly that I was a gowk to take the wind soughing among the trees for music: but I saw Dorothy look at him very fearfully, and Bessy, the kitchen-maid, said something beneath her breath, and went quite white. I saw they did not like my question, so I held my peace till I was with Dorothy alone, when I knew I could get a good deal out of her. So, the next day, I watched my time, and I coaxed and asked her who it was that played the organ; for I knew that it was the organ and not the wind well enough, for all I had kept silence before James. But Dorothy had had her lesson I’ll warrant, and never a word could I get from her. So then I tried Bessy, though I had always held my head rather above her, as I was evened to James and Dorothy, and she was little better than their servant. So she said I must never, never tell; and if I ever told, I was never to say she had told me; but it was a very strange noise, and she had heard it many a time, but most of all on winter nights, and before storms; and folks did say, it was the old lord playing on the great organ in the hall, just as he used to do when he was alive; but who the old lord was, or why he played, and why he played on stormy winter evenings in particular, she either could not or would not tell me. Well! I told you I had a brave heart; and I thought it was rather pleasant to have that grand music rolling about the house, let who would be the player; for now it rose above the great gusts of wind, and wailed and triumphed just like a living creature, and then it fell to a softness most complete; only it was always music, and tunes, so it was nonsense to call it the wind. I thought, at first, that it might be Miss Furnivall who played, unknown to Bessy; but, one day when I was in the hall by myself, I opened the organ and peeped all about it, and around it, as I had done to the organ in Crosthwaite Church once before, and I saw it was all broken and destroyed inside, though it looked so brave and fine; and then, though it was noon-day, my flesh began to creep a little, and I shut it up, and run away pretty quickly to my own bright nursery; and I did not like hearing the music for some time after that, any more than James and Dorothy did. All this time Miss Rosamond was making herself more and more beloved. The old ladies liked her to dine with them at their early dinner; James stood behind Miss Furnivall’s chair, and I behind Miss Rosamond’s all in state; and, after dinner, she would play about in a corner of the great drawing-room, as still as any mouse, while Miss Furnivall slept, and I had my dinner in the kitchen. But she was glad enough to come to me in the nursery afterwards; for, as she said, Miss Furnivall was so sad, and Mrs. Stark so dull; but she and I were merry enough; and, by-and-by, I got not to care for that weird rolling music, which did one no harm, if we did not know where it came from.

That winter was very cold. In the middle of October the frosts began, and lasted many, many weeks. I remember, one day at dinner, Miss Furnivall lifted up her sad, heavy eyes, and said to Mrs. Stark, “I am afraid we shall have a terrible winter,” in a strange kind of meaning way. But Mrs. Stark pretended not to hear, and talked very loud of something else. My little lady and I did not care for the frost; not we! As long as it was dry we climbed up the steep brows, behind the house, and went up on the Fells, which were bleak and bare enough, and there we ran races in the fresh, sharp air; and once we came down by a new path that took us past the two old, gnarled holly-trees, which grew about half-way down by the east side of the house. But the days grew shorter, and shorter; and the old lord, if it was he, played away more, and more stormily and sadly on the great organ. One Sunday afternoon,—it must have been towards the end of November—I asked Dorothy to take charge of little Missey when she came out of the drawing-room, after Miss Furnivall had had her nap; for it was too cold to take her with me to church, and yet I wanted to go. And Dorothy was glad enough to promise, and was so fond of the child that all seemed well; and Bessy and I set off very briskly, though the sky hung heavy and black over the white earth, as if the night had never fully gone away; and the air, though still, was very biting and keen.

“We shall have a fall of snow,” said Bessy to me. And sure enough, even while we were in church, it came down thick, in great, large flakes, so thick it almost darkened the windows. It had stopped snowing before we came out, but it lay soft, thick and deep beneath our feet, as we tramped home. Before we got to the hall the moon rose, and I think it was lighter then,—what with the moon, and what with the white dazzling snow—than it had been when we went to church, between two and three o’clock. I have not told you that Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark never went to church: they used to read the prayers together, in their quiet, gloomy way; they seemed to feel the Sunday very long without their tapestry-work to be busy at. So when I went to Dorothy in the kitchen, to fetch Miss Rosamond and take her up-stairs with me, I did not much wonder when the old woman told me that the ladies had kept the child with them, and that she had never come to the kitchen, as I had bidden her, when she was tired of behaving pretty in the drawing-room. So I took off my things and went to find her, and bring her to her supper in the nursery. But when I went into the best drawing-room, there sat the two old ladies, very still and quiet, dropping out a word now and then, but looking as if nothing so bright and merry as Miss Rosamond had ever been near them. Still I thought she might be hiding from me; it was one of her pretty ways; and that she had persuaded them to look as if they knew nothing about her; so I went softly peeping under this sofa, and behind that chair, making believe I was sadly frightened at not finding her.

“What’s the matter, Hester?” said Mrs. Stark sharply. I don’t know if Miss Furnivall had seen me, for, as I told you, she was very deaf, and she sat quite still, idly staring into the fire, with her hopeless face. “I’m only looking for my little Rosy-Posy,” replied I, still thinking that the child was there, and near me, though I could not see her.

“Miss Rosamond is not here,” said Mrs. Stark. “She went away more than an hour ago to find Dorothy.” And she too turned and went on looking into the fire.

My heart sank at this, and I began to wish I had never left my darling. I went back to Dorothy and told her. James was gone out for the day, but she and me and Bessy took lights and went up into the nursery first, and then we roamed over the great large house, calling and entreating Miss Rosamond to come out of her hiding place, and not frighten us to death in that way. But there was no answer; no sound.

“Oh!” said I at last. “Can she have got into the east wing and hidden there?”

But Dorothy said it was not possible, for that she herself had never been in there; that the doors were always locked, and my lord’s steward had the keys, she believed; at any rate, neither she nor James had ever seen them: so, I said I would go back, and see if, after all, she was not hidden in the drawing-room, unknown to the old ladies; and if I found her there, I said, I would whip her well for the fright she had given me; but I never meant to do it. Well, I went back to the west drawing-room, and I told Mrs. Stark we could not find her anywhere, and asked for leave to look all about the furniture there, for I thought now, that she might have fallen asleep in some warm, hidden corner; but no! we looked, Miss Furnivall got up and looked, trembling all over, and she was no where there; then we set off again, every one in the house, and looked in all the places we had searched before, but we could not find her. Miss Furnivall shivered and shook so much, that Mrs. Stark took her back into the warm drawing-room; but not before they had made me promise to bring her to them when she was found. Well-a-day! I began to think she never would be found, when I bethought me to look out into the great front court, all covered with snow. I was up-stairs when I looked out; but, it was such clear moonlight, I could see quite plain two little footprints, which might be traced from the hall door, and round the corner of the east wing. I don’t know how I got down, but I tugged open the great, stiff hall door; and, throwing the skirt of my gown over head for a cloak, I ran out. I turned the east corner, and there a black shadow fell on the snow; but when I came again into the moonlight, there were the little footmarks going up—up to the Fells. It was bitter cold; so cold that the air almost took the skin off my face as I ran, but I ran on, crying to think how my poor little darling must be perished, and frightened. I was within sight of the holly-trees, when I saw a shepherd coming down the hill, bearing something in his arms wrapped in his maud. He shouted to me, and asked me if I had lost a bairn; and, when I could not speak for crying, he bore towards me, and I saw my wee bairnie lying still, and white, and stiff, in his arms, as if she had been dead. He told me he had been up the Fells to gather in his sheep, before the deep cold of night came on, and that under the holly-trees (black marks on the hill-side, where no other bush was for miles around) he had found my little lady—my lamb—my queen—my darling—stiff, and cold, in the terrible sleep which is frost-­begotten. Oh! the joy, and the tears, of having her in my arms once again! for I would not let him carry her; but took her, maud and all, into my own arms, and held her near my own warm neck, and heart, and felt the life stealing slowly back again into her little, gentle limbs. But she was still insensible when we reached the hall, and I had no breath for speech. We went in by the kitchen door.

“Bring the warming-pan,” said I; and I carried her up-stairs and began undressing her by the nursery fire, which Bessy had kept up. I called my little lammie all the sweet and playful names I could think of,—even while my eyes were blinded by my tears; and at last, oh! at length she opened her large, blue eyes. Then I put her into her warm bed, and sent Dorothy down to tell Miss Furnivall that all was well; and I made up my mind to sit by my darling’s bedside the live-long night. She fell away into a soft sleep as soon as her pretty head had touched the pillow, and I watched by her till morning light; when she wakened up bright and clear—or so I thought at first—and, my dears, so I think now.

She said, that she had fancied that she should like to go to Dorothy, for that both the old ladies were asleep, and it was very dull in the drawing-room; and that, as she was going through the west lobby, she saw the snow through the high window falling—falling—soft and steady; but she wanted to see it lying pretty and white on the ground; so she made her way into the great hall; and then, going to the window, she saw it bright and soft upon the drive; but while she stood there, she saw a little girl, not as old as she was, “but so pretty,” said my darling, “and this little girl beckoned to me to come out; and oh, she was so pretty and so sweet, I could not choose but go.” And then this other little girl had taken her by the hand, and side by side the two had gone round the east corner.

“Now, you are a naughty little girl, and telling stories,” said I. “What would your good mamma, that is in heaven, and never told a story in her life, say to her little Rosamond, if she heard her—and I dare say she does—telling stories!”

“Indeed, Hester,” sobbed out my child, “I’m telling you true. Indeed I am.”

“Don’t tell me!” said I, very stern. “I tracked you by your foot-marks through the snow; there were only yours to be seen: and if you had had a little girl to go hand-in-hand with you up the hill, don’t you think the foot-prints would have gone along with yours?”

“I can’t help it, dear, dear Hester,” said she, crying, “if they did not; I never looked at her feet, but she held my hand fast and tight in her little one, and it was very, very cold. She took me up the Fell-path, up to the holly trees; and there I saw a lady weeping and crying; but when she saw me, she hushed her weeping, and smiled very proud and grand, and took me on her knee, and began to lull me to sleep; and that’s all, Hester—but that is true; and my dear mamma knows it is,” said she, crying. So I thought the child was in a fever, and pretended to believe her, as she went over her story—over and over again, and always the same. At last Dorothy knocked at the door with Miss Rosamond’s breakfast; and she told me the old ladies were down in the eating parlour, and that they wanted to speak to me. They had both been into the night-nursery the evening before, but it was after Miss Rosamond was asleep; so they had only looked at her—not asked me any questions.

“I shall catch it,” thought I to myself, as I went along the north gallery. “And yet,” I thought, taking courage, “it was in their charge I left her; and it’s they that’s to blame for letting her steal away unknown and unwatched.” So I went in boldly, and told my story. I told it all to Miss Furnivall, shouting it close to her ear; but when I came to the mention of the other little girl out in the snow, coaxing and tempting her out, and wiling her up to the grand and beautiful lady by the Holly-tree, she threw her arms up—her old and withered arms—and cried aloud, “Oh! Heaven, forgive! Have mercy!”

Mrs. Stark took hold of her; roughly enough, I thought; but she was past Mrs. Stark’s management, and spoke to me, in a kind of wild warning and authority.

“Hester! keep her from that child! It will lure her to her death! That evil child! Tell her it is a wicked, naughty child.” Then, Mrs. Stark hurried me out of the room; where, indeed, I was glad enough to go; but Miss Furnivall kept shrieking out, “Oh! have mercy! Wilt Thou never forgive! It is many a long year ago——”

I was very uneasy in my mind after that. I durst never leave Miss Rosamond, night or day, for fear lest she might slip off again, after some fancy or other; and all the more, because I thought I could make out that Miss Furnivall was crazy, from their odd ways about her; and I was afraid lest something of the same kind (which might be in the family, you know) hung over my darling. And the great frost never ceased all this time; and, whenever it was a more stormy night than usual, between the gusts, and through the wind, we heard the old lord playing on the great organ. But, old lord, or not, wherever Miss Rosamond went, there I followed; for my love for her, pretty, helpless orphan, was stronger than my fear for the grand and terrible sound. Besides, it rested with me to keep her cheerful and merry, as beseemed her age. So we played together, and wandered together, here and there, and every­where; for I never dared to lose sight of her again in that large and rambling house. And so it happened, that one afternoon, not long before Christmas day, we were playing together on the billiard-table in the great hall (not that we knew the right way of playing, but she liked to roll the smooth ivory balls with her pretty hands, and I liked to do whatever she did); and, by-and-by, without our noticing it, it grew dusk indoors, though it was still light in the open air, and I was thinking of taking her back into the nursery, when, all of sudden, she cried out,

“Look, Hester! look! there is my poor little girl out in the snow!”

I turned towards the long, narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw a little girl, less than my Miss Rosamond—dressed all unfit to be out-of-doors such a bitter night—crying, and beating against the window-panes, as if she wanted to be let in. She seemed to sob and wail, till Miss Rosamond could bear it no longer, and was flying to the door to open it, when, all of a sudden, and close upon us, the great organ pealed out so loud and thundering, it fairly made me tremble; and all the more, when I remembered me that, even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass, although the Phantom Child had seemed to put forth all its force; and, although I had seen it wail and cry, no faintest touch of sound had fallen upon my ears. Whether I remembered all this at the very moment, I do not know; the great organ sound had so stunned me into terror; but this I know, I caught up Miss Rosamond before she got the hall-door opened, and clutched her, and carried her away, kicking and screaming, into the large, bright kitchen, where Dorothy and Agnes were busy with their mince-pies.

“What is the matter with my sweet one?” cried Dorothy, as I bore in Miss Rosamond, who was sobbing as if her heart would break.

“She won’t let me open the door for my little girl to come in; and she’ll die if she is out on the Fells all night. Cruel, naughty Hester,” she said, slapping me; but she might have struck harder, for I had seen a look of ghastly terror on Dorothy’s face, which made my very blood run cold.

“Shut the back kitchen door fast, and bolt it well,” said she to Agnes. She said no more; she gave me raisins and almonds to quiet Miss Rosamond: but she sobbed about the little girl in the snow, and would not touch any of the good things. I was thankful when she cried herself to sleep in bed. Then I stole down to the kitchen, and told Dorothy I had made up my mind. I would carry my darling back to my father’s house in Applethwaite; where, if we lived humbly, we lived at peace. I said I had been frightened enough with the old lord’s organ-playing; but now that I had seen for myself this little moaning child, all decked out as no child in the neighbourhood could be, beating and battering to get in, yet always without any sound or noise—with the dark wound on its right shoulder; and that Miss Rosamond had known it again for the phantom that had nearly lured her to her death (which Dorothy knew was true); I would stand it no longer.

I saw Dorothy change colour once or twice. When I had done, she told me she did not think I could take Miss Rosamond with me, for that she was my lord’s ward, and I had no right over her; and she asked me, would I leave the child that I was so fond of, just for sounds and sights that could do me no harm; and that they had all had to get used to in their turns? I was all in a hot, trembling passion; and I said it was very well for her to talk, that knew what these sights and noises betokened, and that had, perhaps, had something to do with the Spectre-child while it was alive. And I taunted her so, that she told me all she knew, at last; and then I wished I had never been told, for it only made me more afraid than ever.

She said she had heard the tale from old neighbours, that were alive when she was first married; when folks used to come to the hall sometimes, before it had got such a bad name on the country side: it might not be true, or it might, what she had been told.

The old lord was Miss Furnivall’s father—Miss Grace, as Dorothy called her, for Miss Maude was the elder, and Miss Furnivall by rights. The old lord was eaten up with pride. Such a proud man was never seen or heard of; and his daughters were like him. No one was good enough to wed them, although they had choice enough; for they were the great beauties of their day, as I had seen by their portraits, where they hung in the state drawing-room. But, as the old saying is, “Pride will have a fall;” and these two haughty beauties fell in love with the same man, and he no better than a foreign musician, whom their father had down from London to play music with him at the Manor House. For, above all things, next to his pride, the old lord loved music. He could play on nearly every instrument that ever was heard of: and it was a strange thing it did not soften him; but he was a fierce, dour, old man, and had broken his poor wife’s heart with his cruelty, they said. He was mad after music, and would pay any money for it. So he got this foreigner to come; who made such beautiful music, that they said the very birds on the trees stopped their singing to listen. And, by degrees, this foreign gentleman got such a hold over the old lord, that nothing would serve him but that he must come every year; and it was he that had the great organ brought from Holland, and built up in the hall, where it stood now. He taught the old lord to play on it; but many and many a time, when Lord Furnivall was thinking of nothing but his fine organ, and his finer music, the dark foreigner was walking abroad in the woods with one of the young ladies; now Miss Maude, and then Miss Grace.

Miss Maude won the day and carried off the prize, such as it was; and he and she were married, all unknown to any one; and before he made his next yearly visit, she had been confined of a little girl at a farm-house on the Moors, while her father and Miss Grace thought she was away at Doncaster Races. But though she was a wife and a mother, she was not a bit softened, but as haughty and as passionate as ever; and perhaps more so, for she was jealous of Miss Grace, to whom her foreign husband paid a deal of court—by way of blinding her—as he told his wife. But Miss Grace triumphed over Miss Maude, and Miss Maude grew fiercer and fiercer, both with her husband and with her sister; and the former—who could easily shake off what was disagreeable, and hide himself in foreign countries—went away a month before his usual time that summer, and half-threatened that he would never come back again. Meanwhile, the little girl was left at the farm-house, and her mother used to have her horse saddled and gallop wildly over the hills to see her once every week, at the very least—for where she loved, she loved; and where she hated, she hated. And the old lord went on playing—playing on his organ; and the servants thought the sweet music he made had soothed down his awful temper, of which (Dorothy said) some terrible tales could be told. He grew infirm too, and had to walk with a crutch; and his son—that was the present Lord Furnivall’s father—was with the army in America, and the other son at sea; so Miss Maude had it pretty much her own way, and she and Miss Grace grew colder and bitterer to each other every day; till at last they hardly ever spoke, except when the old lord was by. The foreign musician came again the next summer, but it was for the last time; for they led him such a life with their jealousy and their passions, that he grew weary, and went away, and never was heard of again. And Miss Maude, who had always meant to have her marriage acknowledged when her father should be dead, was left now a deserted wife—whom nobody knew to have been married—with a child that she dared not own, although she loved it to distraction; living with a father whom she feared, and a sister whom she hated. When the next summer passed over and the dark foreigner never came, both Miss Maude and Miss Grace grew gloomy and sad; they had a haggard look about them, though they looked handsome as ever. But by-and-by Miss Maude brightened; for her father grew more and more infirm, and more than ever carried away by his music; and she and Miss Grace lived almost entirely apart, having separate rooms, the one on the west side, Miss Maude on the east—those very rooms which were now shut up. So she thought she might have her little girl with her, and no one need ever know except those who dared not speak about it, and were bound to believe that it was, as she said, a cottager’s child she had taken a fancy to. All this Dorothy said, was pretty well known; but what came afterwards no one knew, except Miss Grace, and Mrs. Stark, who was even then her maid, and much more of a friend to her than ever her sister had been. But the servants supposed, from words that were dropped, that Miss Maude had triumphed over Miss Grace, and told her that all the time the dark foreigner had been mocking her with pretended love—he was her own husband; the colour left Miss Grace’s cheek and lips that very day for ever, and she was heard to say many a time that sooner or later she would have her revenge; and Mrs. Stark was for ever spying about the east rooms.

One fearful night, just after the New Year had come in, when the snow was lying thick and deep, and the flakes were still falling—fast enough to blind any one who might be out and abroad—there was a great and violent noise heard, and the old lord’s voice above all, cursing and swearing awfully,—and the cries of a little child,—and the proud defiance of a fierce woman,—and the sound of a blow,—and a dead stillness,—and moans and wailings dying away on the hill-side! Then the old lord summoned all his servants, and told them, with terrible oaths, and words more terrible, that his daughter had disgraced herself, and that he had turned her out of doors,—her, and her child,—and that if ever they gave her help,—or food,—or shelter,—he prayed that they might never enter Heaven. And, all the while, Miss Grace stood by him, white and still as any stone; and when he had ended she heaved a great sigh, as much as to say her work was done, and her end was accomplished. But the old lord never touched his organ again, and died within the year; and no wonder! for, on the morrow of that wild and fearful night, the shepherds, coming down the Fell side, found Miss Maude sitting, all crazy and smiling, under the holly-trees, nursing a dead child,—with a terrible mark on its right shoulder. “But that was not what killed it,” said Dorothy; “it was the frost and the cold;—every wild creature was in its hole, and every beast in its fold,—while the child and its mother were turned out to wander on the Fells! And now you know all! and I wonder if you are less frightened now?”

I was more frightened than ever; but I said I was not. I wished Miss Rosamond and myself well out of that dreadful house for ever; but I would not leave her, and I dared not take her away. But oh! how I watched her, and guarded her! We bolted the doors, and shut the window-shutters fast, an hour or more before dark, rather than leave them open five minutes too late. But my little lady still heard the weird child crying and mourning; and not all we could do or say, could keep her from wanting to go to her, and let her in from the cruel wind and the snow. All this time, I kept away from Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark, as much as ever I could; for I feared them—I knew no good could be about them, with their grey hard faces, and their dreamy eyes, looking back into the ghastly years that were gone. But, even in my fear, I had a kind of pity—for Miss Furnivall, at least. Those gone down to the pit can hardly have a more hopeless look than that which was ever on her face. At last I even got so sorry for her—who never said a word but what was quite forced from her—that I prayed for her; and I taught Miss Rosamond to pray for one who had done a deadly sin; but often when she came to those words, she would listen, and start up from her knees, and say, “I hear my little girl plaining and crying very sad—Oh! let her in, or she will die!”

One night—just after New Year’s Day had come at last, and the long winter had taken a turn, as I hoped—I heard the west drawing-room bell ring three times, which was the signal for me. I would not leave Miss Rosamond alone, for all she was asleep—for the old lord had been playing wilder than ever—and I feared lest my darling should waken to hear the spectre child; see her I knew she could not, I had fastened the windows too well for that. So, I took her out of her bed and wrapped her up in such outer clothes as were most handy, and carried her down to the drawing-room, where the old ladies sat at their tapestry work as usual. They looked up when I came in, and Mrs. Stark asked, quite astounded, “Why did I bring Miss Rosamond there, out of her warm bed?” I had begun to whisper, “Because I was afraid of her being tempted out while I was away, by the wild child in the snow,” when she stopped me short (with a glance at Miss Furnivall), and said Miss Furnivall wanted me to undo some work she had done wrong, and which neither of them could see to unpick. So, I laid my pretty dear on the sofa, and sat down on a stool by them, and hardened my heart against them as I heard the wind rising and howling.

Miss Rosamond slept on sound, for all the wind blew so; and Miss Furnivall said never a word, nor looked round when the gusts shook the windows. All at once she started up to her full height, and put up one hand, as if to bid us listen.

“I hear voices!” said she. “I hear terrible screams—I hear my father’s voice!”

Just at that moment, my darling wakened with a sudden start: “My little girl is crying, oh, how she is crying!” and she tried to get up and go to her, but she got her feet entangled in the blanket, and I caught her up; for my flesh had begun to creep at these noises, which they heard while we could catch no sound. In a minute or two the noises came, and gathered fast, and filled our ears; we, too, heard voices and screams, and no longer heard the winter’s wind that raged abroad. Mrs. Stark looked at me, and I at her, but we dared not speak. Suddenly Miss Furnivall went towards the door, out into the ante-room, through the west lobby, and opened the door into the great hall. Mrs. Stark followed, and I durst not be left, though my heart almost stopped beating for fear. I wrapped my darling tight in my arms, and went out with them. In the hall the screams were louder than ever; they sounded to come from the east wing—nearer and nearer—close on the other side of the locked-up doors—close behind them. Then I noticed that the great bronze chandelier seemed all alight, though the hall was dim, and that a fire was blazing in the vast hearth-place, though it gave no heat; and I shuddered up with terror, and folded my darling closer to me. But as I did so, the east door shook, and she, suddenly struggling to get free from me, cried, “Hester! I must go! My little girl is there; I hear her; she is coming! Hester, I must go!”

I held her tight with all my strength; with a set will, I held her. If I had died, my hands would have grasped her still, I was so resolved in my mind. Miss Furnivall stood listening, and paid no regard to my darling, who had got down to the ground, and whom I, upon my knees now, was holding with both my arms clasped round her neck; she still striving and crying to get free.

All at once, the east door gave way with a thundering crash, as if torn open in a violent passion, and there came into that broad and mysterious light, the figure of a tall old man, with grey hair and gleaming eyes. He drove before him, with many a relentless gesture of abhorrence, a stern and beautiful woman, with a little child clinging to her dress.

“Oh Hester! Hester!” cried Miss Rosamond. “It’s the lady! the lady below the holly-trees; and my little girl is with her. Hester! Hester! let me go to her; they are drawing me to them. I feel them—I feel them. I must go!’

Again she was almost convulsed by her efforts to get away; but I held her tighter and tighter, till I feared I should do her a hurt; but rather that than let her go towards those terrible phantoms. They passed along towards the great hall-door, where the winds howled and ravened for their prey; but before they reached that, the lady turned; and I could see that she defied the old man with a fierce and proud defiance; but then she quailed—and then she threw her arms wildly and piteously to save her child—her little child—from a blow from his uplifted crutch.

And Miss Rosamond was torn as by a power stronger than mine, and writhed in my arms, and sobbed (for by this time the poor darling was growing faint).

“They want me to go with them on to the Fells—they are drawing me to them. Oh, my little girl! I would come, but cruel, wicked Hester holds me very tight.” But when she saw the uplifted crutch she swooned away, and I thanked God for it. Just at this moment—when the tall, old man, his hair streaming as in the blast of a furnace, was going to strike the little, shrinking child—Miss Furnivall, the old woman by my side, cried out, “Oh, father! father! spare the little innocent child!” But just then I saw—we all saw—another phantom shape itself, and grow clear out of the blue and misty light that filled the hall; we had not seen her till now, for it was another lady who stood by the old man, with a look of relentless hate and triumphant scorn. That figure was very beautiful to look upon, with a soft, white hat drawn down over the proud brows, and a red and curling lip. It was dressed in an open robe of blue satin. I had seen that figure before. It was the likeness of Miss Furnivall in her youth; and the terrible phantoms moved on, regardless of old Miss Furnivall’s wild entreaty, and the uplifted crutch fell on the right shoulder of the little child, and the younger sister looked on, stony and deadly serene. But at that moment, the dim lights, and the fire that gave no heat, went out of themselves, and Miss Furnivall lay at our feet stricken down by the palsy—death-stricken.

Yes! she was carried to her bed that night never to rise again. She lay with her face to the wall, muttering low, but muttering always: “Alas! alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age! what is done in youth can never be undone in age!”

I stopped Lucy’s mouth with a kiss. I declined her offer. I would not listen to it. In fact, my pride was up in arms, and I felt I would rather pass the night in the churchyard itself than accept a proposal dictated, I felt sure, by the notion that my nerves were shaken by the ghostly lore we had been raking up, that I was a weak, superstitious creature, unable to pass a night in a strange chamber. So I would not listen to Lucy, but kissed her, bade her good-night, and went on my way laughing, to show my light heart. Yet, as I looked back in the dark corridor, and saw the friendly door still ajar, the yellow bar of light still crossing from wall to wall, the sweet kind face still peering after me from amid its clustering curls, I felt a thrill of sympathy, a wish to return, a yearning after human love and companionship. False shame was strongest, and conquered. I waved a gay adieu. I turned the corner, and, peeping over my shoulder, I saw the door close; the bar of yellow light was there no longer in the darkness of the passage.

I thought, at that instant, that I heard a heavy sigh. I looked sharply round. No one was there. No door was open, yet I fancied, and fancied with a wonderful vividness, that I did hear an actual sigh breathed not far off, and plainly distinguishable from the groan of the sycamore branches, as the wind tossed them to and fro in the outer blackness. If ever a mortal’s good angel had cause to sigh for sorrow, not sin, mine had cause to mourn that night. But imagination plays us strange tricks, and my nervous system was not over-composed, or very fitted for judicial analysis. I had to go through the picture-gallery. I had never entered this apartment by candle-light before, and I was struck by the gloomy array of the tall portraits, gazing moodily from the canvas on the lozenge-paned or painted windows, which rattled to the blast as it swept howling by. Many of the faces looked stern, and very different from their daylight expression. In others, a furtive flickering smile seemed to mock me, as my candle illumined them; and in all, the eyes, as usual with artistic portraits, seemed to follow my motions with a scrutiny and an interest the more marked for the apathetic immovability of the other features. I felt ill at ease under this stony gaze, though conscious how absurd were my apprehensions; and I called up a smile and an air of mirth, more as if acting a part under the eyes of human beings, than of their mere shadows on the wall. I even laughed as I confronted them. No echo had my short-lived laughter but from the hollow armour and arching roof, and I continued on my way in silence. I have spoken of the armour. Indeed, there was a fine collection of plate and mail, for my father was an enthusiastic antiquary. In especial there were two suits of black armour, erect, and surmounted by helmets with closed visors, which stood as if two mailed champions were guarding the gallery and its treasures. I had often seen these, of course, but never by night, and never when my whole organisation was so overwrought and tremulous as it then was. As I approached the Black Knights, as we had dubbed them, a wild notion seized on me that the figures moved, that men were concealed in the hollow shells which had once been borne in battle and tourney. I knew the idea was childish, yet I approached in irrational alarm, and fancied I absolutely beheld eyes glaring on me from the eyelet-holes in the visors. I passed them by, and then my excited fancy told me that the figures were following me with stealthy strides. I heard a clatter of steel, caused, I am sure, by some more violent gust of wind sweeping the gallery through the crevices of the old windows, and with a smothered shriek I rushed to the door, opened it, darted out, and clapped it to with a bang that reechoed through the whole wing of the house. Then by a sudden and not uncommon revulsion of feeling, I shook off my aimless terrors, blushed at my weakness, and sought my chamber only too glad that I had been the only witness of my late tremors.

As I entered my chamber, I thought I heard something stir in the neglected lumber-room, which was the only neighbouring apartment. But I was determined to have no more panics, and resolutely shut my ears to this slight and transient noise, which had nothing unnatural in it; for surely, between rats and wind, an old manor-house on a stormy night needs no sprites to disturb it. So I entered my room, and rang for my maid. As I did so, I looked around me, and a most unaccountable repugnance to my temporary abode came over me, in spite of my efforts. It was no more to be shaken off than a chill is to be shaken off when we enter some damp cave. And, rely upon it, the feeling of dislike and apprehension with which we regard, at first sight, certain places and people, was not implanted in us without some wholesome purpose. I grant it is irrational—mere animal instinct—but is not instinct God’s gift, and is it for us to despise it? It is by instinct that children know their friends from their enemies—that they distinguish with such unerring accuracy between those who like them and those who only flatter and hate them. Dogs do the same; they will fawn on one person, they slink snarling from another. Show me a man whom children and dogs shrink from, and I will show you a false, bad man—lies on his lips, and murder at his heart. No; let none despise the heaven-sent gift of innate antipathy, which makes the horse quail when the lion crouches in the thicket—which makes the cattle scent the shambles from afar, and low in terror and disgust as their nostrils snuff the blood-polluted air. I felt this antipathy strongly as I looked around me in my new sleeping-room, and yet I could find no reasonable pretext for my dislike. A very good room it was, after all, now that the green damask curtains were drawn, the fire burning bright and clear, candles burning on the mantelpiece, and the various familiar articles of toilet arranged as usual. The bed, too, looked peaceful and inviting—a pretty little white bed, not at all the gaunt funereal sort of couch which haunted apartments generally contain.

My maid entered, and assisted me to lay aside the dress and ornaments I had worn, and arranged my hair, as usual, prattling the while, in Abigail fashion. I seldom cared to converse with servants; but on that night a sort of dread of being left alone—a longing to keep some human being near me—possessed me, and I encouraged the girl to gossip, so that her duties took her half an hour longer to get through than usual. At last, however, she had done all that could be done, and all my questions were answered, and my orders for the morrow reiterated and vowed obedience to, and the clock on the turret struck one. Then Mary, yawning a little, asked if I wanted anything more, and I was obliged to answer No, for very shame’s sake; and she went. The shutting of the door, gently as it was closed, affected me unpleasantly. I took a dislike to the curtains, the tapestry, the dingy pictures—everything. I hated the room. I felt a temptation to put on a cloak, run, half-dressed, to my sisters’ chamber, and say I had changed my mind, and come for shelter. But they must be asleep, I thought, and I could not be so unkind as to wake them. I said my prayers with unusual earnestness and a heavy heart. I extinguished the candles, and was just about to lay my head on my pillow, when the idea seized me that I would fasten the door. The candles were extinguished, but the fire-light was amply sufficient to guide me.

I gained the door. There was a lock, but it was rusty or hampered; my utmost strength could not turn the key. The bolt was broken and worthless. Baulked of my intention, I consoled myself by remembering that I had never had need of fastenings yet, and returned to my bed. I lay awake for a good while, watching the red glow of the burning coals in the grate. I was quiet now, and more composed. Even the light gossip of the maid, full of petty human cares and joys, had done me good—diverted my thoughts from brooding. I was on the point of dropping asleep, when I was twice disturbed. Once, by an owl, hooting in the ivy outside—no unaccustomed sound, but harsh and melancholy; once, by a long and mournful howling set up by the mastiff, chained in the yard beyond the wing I occupied. A long-drawn, lugubrious howling, was this latter; and much such a note as the vulgar declare to herald a death in the family. This was a fancy I had never shared; but yet I could not help feeling that the dog’s mournful moans were sad, and expressive of terror, not at all like his fierce, honest bark of anger, but rather as if something evil and unwonted were abroad. But soon I fell asleep.

How long I slept, I never knew. I awoke at once, with that abrupt start which we all know well, and which carries us in a second from utter unconsciousness to the full use of our faculties. The fire was still burning, but was very low, and half the room or more was in deep shadow. I knew, I felt, that some person or thing was in the room, although nothing unusual was to be seen by the feeble light. Yet it was a sense of danger that had aroused me from slumber. I experienced, while yet asleep, the chill and shock of sudden alarm, and I knew, even in the act of throwing off sleep like a mantle, why I awoke, and that some intruder was present. Yet, though I listened intently, no sound was audible, except the faint murmur of the fire,—the dropping of a cinder from the bars—the loud irregular beatings of my own heart.

Notwithstanding this silence, by some intuition I knew that I had not been deceived by a dream, and felt certain that I was not alone. I waited. My heart beat on; quicker, more sudden grew its pulsations, as a bird in a cage might flutter in presence of the hawk. And then I heard a sound, faint, but quite distinct, the clank of iron, the rattling of a chain! I ventured to lift my head from the pillow. Dim and uncertain as the light was, I saw the curtains of my bed shake, and caught a glimpse of something beyond, a darker spot in the darkness. This confirmation of my fears did not surprise me so much as it shocked me. I strove to cry aloud, but could not utter a word. The chain rattled again, and this time the noise was louder and clearer. But though I strained my eyes, they could not penetrate the obscurity that shrouded the other end of the chamber, whence came the sullen clanking. In a moment several distinct trains of thought, like many-coloured strands of thread twining into one, became palpable to my mental vision. Was it a robber? could it be a supernatural visitant? or was I the victim of a cruel trick, such as I had heard of, and which some thoughtless persons love to practise on the timid, reckless of its dangerous results? And then a new idea, with some ray of comfort in it, suggested itself. There was a fine young dog of the Newfoundland breed, a favourite of my father’s, which was usually chained by night in an outhouse. Neptune might have broken loose, found his way to my room, and, finding the door imperfectly closed, have pushed it open and entered. I breathed more freely as this harmless interpretation of the noise forced itself upon me. It was—it must be—the dog, and I was distressing myself uselessly. I resolved to call to him; I strove to utter his name—“Neptune, Neptune!” but a secret apprehension restrained me, and I was mute. Then the chain clanked nearer and nearer to the bed, and presently I saw a dusky shapeless mass appear between the curtains on the opposite side to where I was lying. How I longed to hear the whine of the poor animal that I hoped might be the cause of my alarm. But no; I heard no sound save the rustle of the curtains and the clash of the iron chain. Just then the dying flame of the fire leaped up, and with one sweeping hurried glance I saw that the door was shut, and, horror! it is not the dog! it is the semblance of a human form that now throws itself heavily on the bed, outside the clothes, and lies there, huge and swart, in the red gleam that treacherously dies away after showing so much to affright, and sinks into dull darkness.

There was now no light left, though the red cinders yet glowed with a ruddy gleam, like the eyes of wild beasts. The chain rattled no more. I tried to speak, to scream wildly for help; my mouth was parched, my tongue refused to obey. I could not utter a cry, and, indeed, who could have heard me, alone as I was in that solitary chamber, with no living neighbour, and the picture-gallery between me and any aid that even the loudest, most piercing shriek could summon. And the storm that howled without would have drowned my voice, even if help had been at hand. To call aloud—to demand who was there—alas! how useless, how perilous! If the intruder were a robber, my outcries would but goad him to fury; but what robber would act thus? As for a trick, that seemed impossible. And yet, what lay by my side, now wholly unseen? I strove to pray aloud, as there rushed on my memory a flood of weird legends—the dreaded yet fascinating lore of my childhood. I had heard and read of the spirits of wicked men forced to revisit the scenes of their earthly crimes—of demons that lurked in certain accursed spots—of the ghoul and vampire of the East, stealing amid the graves they rifled for their ghostly banquets; and I shuddered as I gazed on the blank darkness where I knew it lay. It stirred—it moaned hoarsely; and again I heard the chain clank close beside me—so close that it must almost have touched me. I drew myself from it, shrinking away in loathing and terror of the evil thing—what, I knew not, but felt that something malignant was near. And yet, in the extremity of my fear, I dared not speak; I was strangely cautious to be silent, even in moving farther off; for I had a wild hope that it—the phantom, the creature, whichever it was—had not discovered my presence in the room. And then I remembered all the events of the night—Lady Speldhurst’s ill-omened vaticinations, her half-warnings, her singular look as we parted, my sister’s persuasions, my terror in the gallery, the remark that “this was the room nurse Sherrard used to talk of.” And then memory, stimulated by fear, recalled the long forgotten past, the ill-repute of this disused chamber, the sins it had witnessed, the blood spilled, the poison administered by unnatural hate within its walls, and the tradition which called it haunted. The green room—I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided it—how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit for mortal habitation. Was It—the dark form with the chain—a creature of this world, or a spectre? And again—more dreadful still—could it be that the corpses of wicked men were forced to rise, and haunt in the body the places where they had wrought their evil deeds? And was such as these my grisly neighbour?

The chain faintly rattled. My hair bristled; my eyeballs seemed starting from their sockets; the damps of a great anguish were on my brow. My heart laboured as if I were crushed beneath some vast weight. Sometimes it appeared to stop its frenzied beatings, sometimes its pulsations were fierce and hurried; my breath came short and with extreme difficulty, and I shivered as if with cold; yet I feared to stir. It moved, it moaned, its fetters clanked dismally, the couch creaked and shook. This was no phantom, then—no air-drawn spectre. But its very solidity, its palpable presence, were a thousand times more terrible. I felt that I was in the very grasp of what could not only affright, but harm; of something whose contact sickened the soul with deathly fear. I made a desperate resolve: I glided from the bed, I seized a warm wrapper, threw it around me, and tried to grope, with extended hands, my way to the door. My heart beat high at the hope of escape.

But I had scarcely taken one step, before the moaning was renewed, it changed into a threatening growl that would have suited a wolf’s throat, and a hand clutched at my sleeve. I stood motionless. The muttering growl sank to a moan again, the chain sounded no more, but still the hand held its gripe of my garment, and I feared to move. It knew of my presence, then. My brain reeled, the blood boiled in my ears, and my knees lost all strength, while my heart panted like that of a deer in the wolf’s jaws. I sank back, and the benumbing influence of excessive terror reduced me to a state of stupor.

When my full consciousness returned, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, shivering with cold, and barefooted. All was silent, but I felt that my sleeve was still clutched by my unearthly visitant. The silence lasted a long time. Then followed a chuckling laugh, that froze my very marrow, and the gnashing of teeth as in demoniac frenzy; and then a wailing moan, and this was succeeded by silence. Hours may have passed—nay, though the tumult of my own heart prevented my hearing the clock strike, must have passed—but they seemed ages to me. And how were they spent? Hideous visions passed before the aching eyes that I dared not close, but which gazed ever into the dumb darkness where It lay—my dread companion through the watches of the night. I pictured It in every abhorrent form which an excited fancy could summon up: now as a skeleton, with hollow eyeholes and grinning fleshless jaws; now as a vampire, with livid face and bloated form, and dripping mouth wet with blood. Would it never be light! And yet, when day should dawn, I should be forced to see It face to face. I had heard that spectre and fiend were compelled to fade as morning brightened, but this creature was too real, too foul a thing of earth, to vanish at cockcrow. No! I should see it—the horror—face to face! And then the cold prevailed, and my teeth chattered, and shiverings ran through me, and yet there was the damp of agony on my bursting brow. Some instinct made me snatch at a shawl or cloak that lay on a chair within reach, and wrap it round me. The moan was renewed, and the chain just stirred. Then I sank into apathy, like an Indian at the stake, in the intervals of torture.

Hours fled by, and I remained like a statue of ice, rigid and mute. I even slept, for I remember that I started to find the cold grey light of an early winter’s day was on my face, and stealing around the room from between the heavy curtains of the window. Shuddering, but urged by the impulse that rivets the gaze of the bird upon the snake, I turned to see the Horror of the night. Yes, it was no fevered dream, no hallucination of sickness, no airy phantom unable to face the dawn. In the sickly light I saw it lying on the bed, with its grim head on the pillow. A man? Or a corpse arisen from its unhallowed grave, and awaiting the demon that animated it? There it lay—a gaunt gigantic form, wasted to a skeleton, half clad, foul with dust and clotted gore, its huge limbs flung upon the couch as if at random, its shaggy hair streaming over the pillows like a lion’s mane. Its face was towards me. Oh, the wild hideousness of that face, even in sleep! In features it was human, even through its horrid mask of mud and half-dried bloody gouts, but the expression was brutish and savagely fierce; the white teeth were visible between the parted lips, in a malignant grin; the tangled hair and beard were mixed in leonine confusion, and there were scars disfiguring the brow. Round the creature’s waist was a ring of iron, to which was attached a heavy but broken chain—the chain I had heard clanking. With a second glance I noted that part of the chain was wrapped in straw, to prevent its galling the wearer. The creature—I cannot call it a man—had the marks of fetters on its wrists, the bony arm that protruded through one tattered sleeve was scarred and bruised; the feet were bare, and lacerated by pebbles and briers, and one of them was wounded, and wrapped in a morsel of rag. And the lean hands, one of which held my sleeve, were armed with talons like an eagle’s. In an instant the horrid truth flashed upon me—I was in the grasp of a madman. Better the phantom that scares the sight than the wild beast that rends and tears the quivering flesh—the pitiless human brute that has no heart to be softened, no reason at whose bar to plead, no compassion, nought of man save the form and the cunning. I gasped in terror. Ah! the mystery of those ensanguined fingers, those gory wolfish jaws! that face, all besmeared with blackening blood, is revealed!

The slain sheep, so mangled and rent—the fantastic butchery—the print of the naked foot—all, all were explained; and the chain, the broken link of which was found near the slaughtered animals—it came from his broken chain—the chain he had snapped, doubtless, in his escape from the asylum where his raging frenzy had been fettered and bound. In vain! in vain! Ah, me! how had this grisly Samson broken manacles and prison bars—how had he eluded guardian and keeper and a hostile world, and come hither on his wild way, hunted like a beast of prey, and snatching his hideous banquet like a beast of prey, too? Yes, through the tatters of his mean and ragged garb I could see the marks of the severities, cruel and foolish, with which men in that time tried to tame the might of madness. The scourge—its marks were there; and the scars of the hard iron fetters, and many a cicatrice and welt, that told a dismal tale of harsh usage.

But now he was loose, free to play the brute—the baited, tortured brute that they had made him—now without the cage, and ready to gloat over the victims his strength should overpower. Horror! horror! I was the prey—the victim—already in the tiger’s clutch; and a deadly sickness came over me, and the iron entered into my soul, and I longed to scream, and was dumb! I died a thousand deaths as that awful morning wore on. I dared not faint. But words cannot paint what I suffered as I waited—waited till the moment when he should open his eyes and be aware of my presence; for I was assured he knew it not. He had entered the chamber as a lair, when weary and gorged with his horrid orgie; and he had flung himself down to sleep without a suspicion that he was not alone. Even his grasping my sleeve was doubtless an act done betwixt sleeping and waking, like his unconscious moans and laughter, in some frightful dream.

Hours went on; then I trembled as I thought that soon the house would be astir, that my maid would come to call me as usual, and awake that ghastly sleeper. And might he not have time to tear me, as he tore the sheep, before any aid could arrive? At last what I dreaded came to pass—a light footstep on the landing—there is a tap at the door. A pause succeeds, and then the tapping is renewed, and this time more loudly. Then the madman stretched his limbs and uttered his moaning cry, and his eyes slowly opened—very slowly opened, and met mine. The girl waited awhile ere she knocked for the third time. I trembled lest she should open the door unbidden—see that grim thing, and by her idle screams and terror bring about the worst. Long before strong men could arrive I knew that I should be dead—and what a death!

The maid waited, no doubt surprised at my unusually sound slumbers, for I was in general a light sleeper and an early riser, but reluctant to deviate from habit by entering without permission. I was still alone with the thing in man’s shape, but he was awake now. I saw the wondering surprise in his haggard bloodshot eyes; I saw him stare at me half vacantly, then with a crafty yet wondering look; and then I saw the devil of murder begin to peep forth from those hideous eyes, and the lips to part as in a sneer, and the wolfish teeth to bare themselves. But I was not what I had been. Fear gave me a new and a desperate composure—a courage foreign to my nature. I had heard of the best method of managing the insane; I could but try; I did try. Calmly, wondering at my own feigned calm, I fronted the glare of those terrible eyes. Steady and undaunted was my gaze—motionless my attitude. I marvelled at myself, but in that agony of sickening terror I was outwardly firm. They sink, they quail abashed, those dreadful eyes, before the gaze of a helpless girl; and the shame that is never absent from insanity bears down the pride of strength, the bloody cravings of the wild beast. The lunatic moaned and drooped his shaggy head between his gaunt squalid hands. I lost not an instant. I rose, and with one spring reached the door, tore it open, and, with a shriek, rushed through, caught the wondering girl by the arm, and, crying to her to run for her life, rushed like the wind along the gallery, down the corridor, down the stairs. Mary’s screams filled the house as she fled beside me. I heard a long-drawn, raging cry, the roar of a wild animal mocked of its prey, and I knew what was behind me. I never turned my head—I flew rather than ran. I was in the hall already; there was a rush of many feet, an outcry of many voices, a sound of scuffling feet, and brutal yells, and oaths, and heavy blows, and I fell to the ground, crying, “Save me!” and lay in a swoon.

I awoke from a delirious trance. Kind faces were around my bed, loving looks were bent on me by all, by my dear father and dear sisters, but I scarcely saw them before I swooned again. . . .

When I recovered from that long illness, through which I had been nursed so tenderly, the pitying looks I met made me tremble. I asked for a looking-glass. It was long denied me, but my importunity prevailed at last—a mirror was brought. My youth was gone at one fell swoop. The glass showed me a livid and haggard face, blanched and bloodless as of one who sees a spectre; and in the ashen lips, and wrinkled brow, and dim eyes, I could trace nothing of my old self. The hair, too, jetty and rich before, was now as white as snow, and in one night the ravages of half a century had passed over my face. Nor have my nerves ever recovered their tone after that dire shock. Can you wonder that my life was blighted, that my lover shrank from me, so sad a wreck was I?

I am old now—old and alone. My sisters would have had me to live with them, but I chose not to sadden their genial homes with my phantom face and dead eyes. Reginald married another. He has been dead many years. I never ceased to pray for him, though he left me when I was bereft of all. The sad weird is nearly over now. I am old, and near the end, and wishful for it. I have not been bitter or hard, but I cannot bear to see many people, and am best alone. I try to do what good I can with the worthless wealth Lady Speldhurst left me, for at my wish my portion was shared between my sisters. What need had I of inheritances?—I, the shattered wreck made by that one night of horror!

“Come up here,” cried a voice which did not sound like Mr. Erle’s. I ran up the stairs and I found him alone in a small room which contained little else than an escritoire, a cabinet, and two great chairs. On one side, a large Parisian looking-glass, à la Régence, was fixed on the wall. The branches for lights still held some yellow bits of wax-candle covered with dust. I joined Mr. Erle, who was looking through the window over a vast expanse of mountainous moorland. “What a grand prospect!” I exclaimed. “I like these two rooms very much. I shall certainly come and live here.”

“You shall tell me your opinion about that to-morrow,” said Mr. Erle. “I must go now.”

Concealing as much as possible the contempt I felt for his absurd superstition, I accompanied him down-stairs again. “Are these the only rooms worth looking at?” I asked.

“No; most of the rooms are good enough for a gentleman’s household. The rooms I have shown you, and the passages and staircase which lead from one to the other, are the only portions of the house in which you are subjected to annoyance. I have slept in both the rooms, and advise no one else to do so.”

“You had bad dreams?” I asked, with an involuntary smile, as I took my gun from the hall-table, where I had left it.

“As you please,” said Mr. Erle, smiling also.

I stretched out my hand to him when we stood at the gate together.

“Good night!” said I. “I think I shall sleep in one of those rooms, and return to you in the morning.”

Mr. Erle shook his head. “You will be back at my house within three hours, Tom Whinmore; so, au revoir!”

He strode away over the moor. His fine figure appeared almost gigantic as it moved between me and the setting sun.

“That does not look like a man who should be a prey to weak superstition, any more than good Ralph Thirlston, who drove home alone willingly enough past this same gate and fence at nine o’clock last night! The witching hour, it seems, is just after sunset. Well, it wants a quarter of an hour of that now,” I continued, thinking silently. “There will be time enough for me to explore the garden a little, before I return to the house and wait for my evening’s entertainment.”

As I walked through the shrubbery, I recollected the figure I had seen outside the fence on the previous evening. I must find out how that trick is managed, thought I, and if I get a chance I will certainly wing that ghost, pour encourager les autres.

Ascertaining, as well as I was able, the part of the shrubbery near which I saw the man, I began to search for footsteps or marks of human ingenuity. I soon discovered the elder bush that had sent some of its branches through a hole in the fence. I crept round it, and examined the fence. No plank was loose, though some boughs had grown through the hole. I could see no footstep except my own on the moist, dank leafy mould. I got over the fence and saw no marks outside. Baffled, and yet suspicious, I went back and continued my walk, in the course of which I came upon sundry broken and decayed summer-houses and seats. In the tangled flower-garden, on the south-west side, were a few rich blossoms, growing amicably with the vilest weeds. I tore up a great root of hemlock to get at a branch of Provence rose, and then seeing that the sun had disappeared below the opposite fell, I pursued my course and arrived again at the broad gravel path leading from the gate to the hall-door.

Both stood open, as I had left them. I lingered on the grass-grown steps to look at the last rays of the sun, reddening the heather on the distant fell. As I leaned on my gun enjoying the profound stillness of this place, far from all sounds of village, or wood, or sea—a stillness that seemed to deepen and deepen into unearthly intensity—the charm was broken by a human voice speaking near me—the tone was hollow and full of agony—“Bring me a light! Bring me a light!” it cried. It was like a sick or dying man. The voice came, I thought, from the room next to me on the right hand of the Hall. I rushed into the house and to the door of that room; it was the first which Mr. Erle had shown me. I remembered shutting the door—it now stood wide open; and there was a sound of hurrying footsteps within.

“Who is there?” I shouted. No answer came. But there passed by me, as it were, in the very doorway, the figure of a young and, as I could see at a glance, very beautiful woman.

When she moved onwards I could not choose but follow, trembling with an indefinable fear, yet borne on by a mystic attraction. At the foot of the stairs she turned on me again, and smiled, and beckoned me with an upraised arm, whereon great jewels flashed in the gloom. I followed her quickly, but could not overtake her. My limbs—I am not ashamed to say it—shook with strange fear; yet I could not turn back from following that fair form. Onward she led me—up the stairs and through the gallery to the door of the lady’s chamber. There she paused a moment, and again turned her bewitching face, radiant with smiles, upon me before she disappeared within the dark doorway. I followed into the room, and saw her stand before the antique toilette and arrange in her bosom a spray of roses—the very spray that I had so lately pulled in the garden, it seemed—then she kissed her hand to me and glided to the narrow stairs that led to the little room above. Then came a loud haughty voice—the voice of a woman accustomed to command. It sounded from the little room above, and it could not be the voice of that fair girl, I felt sure. It said:

“Bring me a light! Bring me a light!”

I shuddered at the sound; I knew not why, but I stood there still. I then saw the figure of an old female servant, rise from a chair by one of the windows. She approached the toilette, and there I saw her light two tapers, with her breath, it seemed.

“Bring me a light!” was repeated in an angry tone from the upper room.

The old woman passed rapidly to the stairs. Thither I followed in obedience to a sign from her; and, mounting to the top, saw into the room.

That beautiful girl stood in the centre, with her costly lace gown sweeping the floor, and her bright curls drooping to the waist. Her back was towards me, but I could see her innocent, sweet face in the great glass. What a lovely, happy face it was!

Behind her stood another lady, taller, and more majestic. She pretended to caress her, but her proud eyes, unseen by the young lady, brightened with triumphant malice. They danced gladly in the light of the taper which she took from the maid. “God of heaven! can a woman look so wicked?” I thought.

“Watch her!” whispered a voice in my ear—a voice that stirred my hair.

I did watch her. Would to God I could forget that vision! She—the woman, the fiend—bent carefully to the floor, as though to set right something amiss in the border of the fair bride’s robe. I saw her lower the flame of the candle, and set fire to the dress of the smiling, trusting girl. Ere I could move she was enveloped in flames, and I heard her wild shrieks mingling with the low demoniac laughter of her murderess.

I remember suddenly raising the gun in my hand and firing at the horrid apparition. But still she laughed and pointed with mocking gestures to the flames and the writhing figure they enveloped. I ran forward to extinguish them;—my arms struck against the wall, and I fell down insensible.

When I recovered my senses I found myself lying on the floor of that little room, with the bright cold moon looking in on me. I waited without moving, listening for some more of those demon sounds. All was still. I rose—went to the window—the moon was high in heaven, and all the great moor seemed light as day. The air of that room was stifling. I turned and fled. Hastily I ran down those few steps—quicker yet through the great chamber and out into the gallery. As I began to go down the stairs, I saw a figure coming up.

I was now a very coward. Grasping the banister with one hand, and feeling for the unused pistol with the other, I called out—

“Who are you?” and with stupid terror I fired at the thing, without pausing.

There was a slight cry; a very human one. Then a little laugh.

“Don’t fire any more pistols at me, Mr. Whinmore. I’m not a ghost.”

Something in the voice sent the blood once more coursing through my veins.

“Is it ——?” I could not utter another word.

“It is I, Grace Erle.”

“What brought you here?” I said, at length, after I had descended the stairs, and had seized her hand that I might feel sure it was of flesh and blood.

“My pony. We began to get uneasy about you. It is nearly midnight. So papa and I set off to see what you were doing.”

“What the devil are you firing at, Whinmore?” asked Mr. Erle, coming hurriedly from a search in the lower rooms.

“Only at me, papa!” answered his daughter, archly, glancing up at my face. “But he is a bad shot, for he didn’t hit me.”

“Thank God!” I ejaculated—“Miss Erle, I was mad.”

“No, only very frightened. Look at him, papa!”

Mr. Erle looked at me. He took my arm.

“Why! Whinmore, you don’t look the better for seeing the spirits of your ancestors. However, I see it is no longer a joking matter with you. You do not wish to take up your abode here immediately.”

I rallied under their kindly badinage.

“Let me get out of this horrible place,” said I.

Mr. Erle led me beyond the gate. I leaned against it, in a state of exhaustion.

“Here. Try your hand at my other pocket-pistol!” said Mr. Erle, as he put a precious flask of that kind to my lips. After a second application of the remedy I was decidedly better.

Miss Erle mounted her pony, and we set off across the moor. I was very silent, and my companions talked a little with each other. My mind was too confused to recollect just then all that I had experienced during my stay in the house, and I wished to arrange my thoughts and compose my nerves before I conversed with Mr. Erle on the strange visions of that night.

I excused myself to my host and his daughter, in the best way I could, and after taking a slice of bread and a glass of water, I went to bed.

The next day I rose late; but in my right mind. I was much shocked to think of the cowardly fear which had led me to fire a pistol at Miss Erle. I began my interview with my host, by uttering some expressions of this feeling. But it was an awkward thing to declare myself a fool and a coward.

“The less we say about that the better,” said her father, gravely. “Fear is the strongest human passion, my boy; and will lead us to commit the vilest acts, if we let it get the mastery.”

“I acknowledge that I was beside myself with terror at the sights and sounds of that accursed house. I was not sane, at the moment I saw your daughter! I shall never—”

“Whinmore, she hopes you will never mention it again! We certainly shall not. Now, if you are disposed to hear the story of your ancestor’s evil deeds, I am ready to fulfil the promise I made you last night. I see you know too much, now, to think me a fool for believing my own senses, and keeping clear of disagreeable creatures that will not trouble themselves about me. I don’t raise the question of what they are, or how they exist—nor even whether they exist at all. It is sufficient that they appear; and that by their appearance they put a stop to normal human life. You may be a philosopher; and may find some means of banishing these supernatural horrors. I shall like you none the less, if you can do what I cannot.”

“I will try. Will you tell the story?”

“Yes, if you will take a cigar with me first.”

After we had composed ourselves comfortably before the fire in his study, Mr. Erle began.

“How long ago, I can’t exactly find out, but some time between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion, the Whinmores settled in this part of the county, and owned a large tract of land. They were of gentle blood, and most ungentle manners; for they quarrelled with every one, and carried themselves in an insolent fashion, to the simple below them, and to the noble above. The Whinmores were iron-handed and iron-hearted, staunch Catholics and staunch Jacobites, during the religious and political dissensions of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. After the establishment of Protestantism in the reigns of William III. and Anne, the position of the proud house of Whinmore was materially altered. The cadets went early into foreign service as soldiers and priests, and the first born remained at home to keep up a blighted dignity. After the establishment of the Hanoverian dynasty, the Whinmores of Whinmore ceased to take any part in public affairs. They were too proud to farm their own land; and putting trust in a nefarious steward, the Whinmore who reigned at the Hall when King George the Second reigned over England was compelled to keep up appearances by selling half the family estate.

“The Whinmore in question, ‘t’ould squire,’ as the people call him, was a melancholy man, not much blest in the matrimonial lottery. His wife, Lady Henrietta Whinmore, was the daughter of a poor Catholic Earl. Tradition says she was equally beautiful and proud; and I believe it.

“To return. This couple had only one child, a son. When Lady Henrietta found that her husband was a gentleman of a moping and unenterprising turn of mind, that she could not persuade him to compromise his principles, and so find favour with the new government, she devoted herself to the education of her son, Graham. As he was a clever boy, with strong health and good looks, she determined that he should retrieve the fortunes of the family. She kept him under her own superintendence till he was ten years of age. She then sent him to Eton, with his cousin the little Earl of ——. He was brought up a Protestant, and thus the civil disabilities of the family would be removed. He was early accustomed to the society of all ranks, to be found in a first-class English public school; and his personal gifts as well as his mental excellence helped to win him the good opinion of others. Graham came home from Oxford in his twenty-third year, a first-class man.”

“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “I hope I am descended from him, and that his good luck will be a part of my inheritance. Is there any portrait of this fine young English gentleman of the olden time?”

“A very good one. It is in my daughter’s sitting-room. We are both struck by your likeness to your grandfather, Graham Whinmore.”

“I shall never take a first-class,” I sighed; “but go on.”

“When Graham returned home after his success at college, he found his father a hopeless valetudinarian, who had had his bed brought down to his library, because he thought himself too feeble to go up and down stairs. He showed little emotion at sight of his son, and seemed to be fast sinking to idiotcy. His mother, on the contrary, was radiant with joy; and had made the old ruined house look its best to welcome the heir. For, at that time, the place was much dilapidated, and only a small portion was habitable, that is the part you saw yesterday, the south front.

“And Graham stayed at home for a month or two in repose, after the fatigues of study. One afternoon as he rode home from a distant town, he paused on the top of Whinmore Hill, which commands a good view of the Hall. The simple bareness of the great hills around, the antique beauty and retirement of the Hall—above all, the sweet impressive stillness of the place, had often charmed Graham, as a boy. Now he gazed with far stronger feeling at it all.

“ ‘It shall not be lost to me and my children,’ he vowed, inwardly. ‘I will redeem the mortgage on the house, I will win back every acre of the old Whinmore land. Yes, I will work for wealth; but I must lose no time, or my opportunity will be gone.’

“He looked at the ruined part of the house, and began to calculate the cost of rebuilding as he hastened forward. As soon as he entered the house he went to see his father, whom he had not seen that day. He found him in his bed, with the nurse asleep in the easy chair beside it. His father did not recognise him, and to Graham’s mind, looked very much changed since the previous day. He left the room in search of his mother; thinking, in spite of his love for her, that she neglected her duty as a wife. ‘She should be beside him now,’ he thought. Still, he framed the best excuse he could for her then, for he loved and reverenced her. She was so strong-minded, so beautiful. Above all, she loved him with such passionate devotion. He dreaded to tell her the resolution he had formed. She was an aristocrat and a woman. She did not understand the mutation of things in that day; she would not believe that the best way to wealth and power was not through the Court influence, but by commercial enterprise. He went to her bedroom, the Lady’s Chamber, in which you were last night. She was not there, and he was about to retreat, when he heard her voice in anger speaking to some one, in the dressing-room or oratory above. Graham went towards the stairs, and was met by an old female servant who was in his mother’s confidence, and acted as her maid and head-nurse to his father. She came down in tears, murmuring, ‘I cannot bear it. It was you gave me the draught for him. I will send for a doctor.’

“ ‘A doctor, indeed! He wants no doctor,’ cried the angry mistress. ‘And don’t talk any more nonsense, my good woman, if you value your place.’

“In her agitation the woman did not see her young master, and hastily left the room.

“Astonished at the woman’s words, he slowly ascended the steps to the dressing-room. He found his mother standing before the long looking-glass arrayed in a rich dress of old point lace, over a brocaded petticoat, with necklace, bracelets, and tiara of diamonds. She looked very handsome as her great eyes still flashed and her cheek was yet crimson with anger. She turned hastily as her son’s foot was heard on the topmost stair. When she saw who it was her face softened with a smile.

“ ‘You here, Graham! I have been wanting you. Read that.’

“He could scarcely take his admiring eyes from the brilliant figure before him as he received the letter.

“It was addressed to his mother, and came from his cousin, the Earl, informing her that he had obtained a certain post under government for Graham.

“She kissed him as he sat down after reading the letter.

“ ‘There is your first step on fortune’s ladder, my son. You are sure to rise.’

“ ‘I hope so, mother. But where are you going decked out in the family diamonds and lace?’

“ ‘Have you forgotten?—To the ball at the Lord-Lieutenant’s. You must dress quickly, or we shall be late. Your cousin will be there, and we must thank him for that letter.’

“ ‘Yes, mother,’ he replied, ‘but we must refuse the place—I have other views.’

“Lady Henrietta’s brow darkened.

“ ‘Mother! I have vowed to recover the estate of my ancestors. It will require a large fortune to do this. I cannot get a large fortune by dangling about the Court—I am going to turn merchant.’

“Lady Henrietta stared at him in amazement.

“ ‘You?—My son become a merchant?’

“ ‘Why not, mother? Sons of nobler houses have done so; and I have advantages that few have ever had. Listen, dear mother. I saved the life of a college friend, who was drowning. His father is one of the wealthiest merchants in London—in all England. He wrote to tell me that if it suited my views and those of my family, he was ready to receive me, at once, as a junior partner in his firm. He had learned from his son that I wished to become rich that I might buy back my ancestral estate. His offer puts it in my power to become rich in a comparatively short space of time.—I intend to accept his munificent offer.’

“Lady Henrietta’s proud bosom swelled; but there was something in her son’s tone which made her feel that anger and persuasion were alike vain. After some minutes’ silence, she said bitterly:

“ ‘The world is changed indeed, Graham, if men of gentle blood can become traders and not lose their gentility.’

“ ‘They can, mother. And I do not think the world can be much changed in that particular. A man of gentle blood, who is, in very truth, a gentleman, cannot lose that distinction in any occupation. Come, good mother, give me a smile! I am about to go forth to win an inheritance. I shall fight with modern weapons—the pen and the ledger—instead of sword and shield.’

“At that moment hasty steps were heard in the chamber below, and a voice called:

“ ‘My lady! my lady! come quick! The Squire is dying!’

“Mother and son went fast to Mr. Whinmore’s room. They arrived in time to see the old man die. He pointed to her, and cried with his last breath,

“ ‘She did it! She did it!’

“Lady Henrietta sat beside his bed and listened to these incoherent words without any outward emotion. She watched the breath leave the body, and then closed the eyes herself. But though she kept up so bravely then, she was dangerously ill for several months after her husband’s death, and was lovingly tended by her son and the old servant.

* * * *

“I must now pass over ten years. Before the end of that time Graham Whinmore had become rich enough to buy back every acre of the land and to build a brand new house, twenty times finer than the old one, if he were so minded. But he was by no means so minded. He restored the old house—made it what it now is. He would not have accepted Chatsworth or Stowe in exchange.

“The Lady Henrietta lived there still; and superintended all the improvements. She had become reconciled to her son’s occupation for the sake of the result in wealth. She entered eagerly into all his plans for the improvement of his property, and she had some of her own to propose.

“It was the autumn of the tenth year since her husband’s death, and she was expecting Graham shortly for his yearly visit to the Hall. She sat looking over papers of importance in her dressing-room; the old servant (who seems to have grown no older) sat sewing in the bedroom below, when a housemaid brought in a letter which the old servant took immediately to her mistress.

“Lady Henrietta opened the letter quickly, for she saw that the handwriting was her son’s. ‘Perhaps he is coming this week,’ she thought with a thrill of delight. ‘Yes, he will come to take me to the Lord-Lieutenant’s ball. He is proud of his mother yet, and I must look my best.’ But she had not read a dozen words before the expression of her face changed. Surprise darkened into contempt and anger—anger deepened into rage and hatred. She uttered a sharp cry of pain. The old servant ran to her in alarm; but her mistress had composed herself, though her cheek was livid.

“ ‘Did your ladyship call me?’

“ ‘Yes. Bring me a light!’

“In this letter Graham announced his return home the following week—with a wife;—a beautiful girl—penniless and without connections of gentility. No words can describe the bitter rage and disappointment of this proud woman. He had a second time thwarted her plans for his welfare, and each time he had outraged her strongest feelings. He had turned merchant, and by his plebeian peddling had bought the land which his ancestors had won at the point of the sword. She had borne that, and had submitted to help him in his schemes. But receive a beggarly, low-born wench for her daughter-in-law?—No! She would never do that. She paced the room with soft, firm steps, like a panther. After a time thought became clearer, and she saw that there was no question of her willingness to receive her daughter-in-law, but of that daughter-in-law’s willingness to allow her to remain in the house. Ah! but it was an awful thing to see the proud woman when she looked that fact fully in the face. She hated her unseen daughter with a keen cold hate—a remorseless hate born of that terrible sin, Pride. But she was not a woman to hate passively. She paced to and fro, turning and returning with savage, stealthy quickness. The day waned, and night began. Her servant came to see if she were wanted, and was sent away with a haughty negative. ‘She is busy with some wicked thought,’ murmured the old woman.

* * * *

“Graham Whinmore’s bride was, as he had said, ‘so good and so lovely,’ that no one ever thought of asking who were her parents. She was also accomplished and elegant in manner. She was in all respects but birth superior to the Duke’s daughter whom Lady Henrietta had selected for her son’s wife. The beautiful Lilian’s father was a music master, and she had given lessons in singing herself. Lady Henrietta learned this and everything else concerning her young daughter-in-law that could be considered disgraceful in her present station. But she put restraint on her contempt, and received her with an outward show of courtesy and stately kindness. Graham believed that for his sake his mother was determined to forget his wife’s low origin, and he became easy about the result of their connection after he had seen his mother caress his wife once or twice. He felt sure that no one could know Lilian and not love her. He was proud and happy to think that two such beautiful women belonged to him.

“The Lord-Lieutenant’s ball was expected to be unusually brilliant that year, and Graham was anxious that his wife should be the queen of the assembly.

“ ‘I should like her to wear the old lace and the jewels, mother,’ said Graham.

“The Lady Henrietta’s eyebrows were contracted for a moment, and she shot forth a furtive glance at Lilian, who sat near, playing with a greyhound.

“If Graham had seen that glance! But her words he believed.

“ ‘Certainly, my son. It is quite proper that your wife should wear such magnificent heirlooms. There is no woman of quality in this county that can match them. I am proud to abdicate my right in her favour.’

“ ‘There, Lilian! Do you hear, you are to eclipse the Duchess herself!’

“I will do so, if you wish it,’ said Lilian. ‘But I do not think that will amuse me so much as dancing.’

* * * *

“Balls, in those times, began at a reasonable hour. Ladies who went to a ball early in November, began to dress by daylight.

“Lilian had been dressed by her maid. Owing to a certain sentimental secret between her and her husband, she wore her wedding-dress of white Indian muslin, instead of a rich brocaded silk petticoat, underneath the grand lace robe. The diamonds glittered gaily round her head and her softly-rounded throat and arms. She went to the old library, where Graham sat awaiting the ladies. She wanted his opinion concerning her appearance. The legend does not tell how he behaved on this occasion, but leaves it to young husbands to imagine.

“ ‘You must go to my mother, and let her see how lovely you look. Walk first, that I may see how you look behind.’ So she took from his hand a spray of roses he had gathered, and preceded him from the room, and up the staircase to his mother’s chamber. She was in the dressing-room above.

“ ‘Go up by yourself,’ said Graham; ‘I will remain on the stairs, and watch you both. I should like to hear what she says, when she does not think I hear; for she never praises you much to me, for fear of increasing my blind adoration, I suppose.’

“Lilian smiled at him, and disappeared up the stairs. It was now becoming dark, and as he approached the stairs, a few minutes afterwards, to hear what was said, his mother’s voice, in a strange, eager tone, called from above,

“ ‘Bring me a light! Bring me a light!’

“Then Graham saw his mother’s old servant run quickly from her seat by the window, and light a tall taper on the toilette. She carried this up to her mistress, and found Graham on the stair on her return. She grasped his arm, and whispered fearfully,

“ ‘Watch her! Watch her!’

“He did watch, and saw—”

“For God’s sake, Mr. Erle,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me what he saw—for I saw the same dreadful sight!”

“I have no doubt you did, since you say so; and because I have seen it myself.”

We were silent for some moments, and then I asked if he knew anything more of these people.

“Yes—the rest is well known to every one who lives within twenty miles. Graham Whinmore vowed not to remain under the same roof with his mother, after he had seen his wife’s blackened corpse. His grief and resentment were quiet and enduring. He would not leave the corpse in the house; but before midnight had it carried to a summer-house in the shrubbery, where he watched beside it, and allowed no one to approach, except the old servant who figures in this story. She brought him food, and carried his commands to the household. From the day of Lilian’s death till the day of her burial in the family vault at Whinmore Church, Graham guarded the summer-house where his wife lay, with his drawn sword as he walked by night round about. It was known that he would not allow the family jewels to be taken from the body, and that they were to be buried with it. Some say that he finally took them from the body himself, and buried them in the shrubbery, lest the undertakers, tempted by the sight of the jewels on the corpse, might desecrate her tomb afterwards for the sake of stealing them. This opinion is supported by the fact that a portion of the shrubbery is haunted by the apparition of Graham Whinmore, in mourning garments, and with a drawn sword in his hand.

“Would you advise me to institute a search for those old jewels?” I asked smiling.

“I would,” said he. “But take no one into your confidence, Tom Whinmore. You may raise a laugh against you, if you are unsuccessful. And if you find them, and take them away—”

“Which I certainly should do,” I interrupted.

“You will raise a popular outcry against you. The superstitious people will believe that you have outraged the ghost of your great-grandfather, who will become mischievous, in consequence.”

I saw the prudence of this remark; and it was agreed between us, that we should do all the digging ourselves, unknown to any one. I then asked how it was that I was descended from this unfortunate gentleman.

Mr. Erle’s story continued thus:—

“After his wife’s funeral, Graham Whinmore did not return to the Hall, but went away to the south, and never came here again, not even to visit his mother on her death-bed, a year after. In a few years he married again, and had sons and daughters. To an unmarried daughter, Jane Whinmore,—always called ‘Leddy Jane’ by our neighbours,—he left the house and lands. He did not care to keep it in the family, and she might leave it to a stranger, or sell it, if she pleased. It was but a small portion of Graham Whinmore’s property, as you must know. She, however—this ‘Leddy Jane’—took a great fancy to the old place. She is said to have lived on terms of familiarity with the ghost of her grandmother, and still more affectionately with her father’s first wife. She heard nothing of the buried jewels, and saw nothing of her own father’s ghost during his lifetime. That part of the story did not come to light until after the death of Graham Whinmore; when the ‘Leddy Jane’ herself was startled one evening in the shrubbery, by meeting the apparition of her father. It is said that she left her property to her youngest nephew’s youngest son, in obedience to his injunctions during that interview.”

“So that though unborn at the time, I may consider myself lord of Whinmore Hall, by the will of my great-grandfather!” I said.

“Precisely so. I think it an indication that the ghostly power is to die out in your time. The last year of the wicked Lady Henrietta’s life was very wretched, as you may suppose. Her besetting and cherished sins brought their own reward—and her crowning crime was avenged without the terror of the law. For it is said that every evening at sunset the apparition of her murdered daughter-in-law came before her, wearing the rich dress which was so dear to the proud woman; and that she was compelled to repeat the cruel act, and to hear her screams and the farewell curses of her adored son. The servants all left the Hall in affright; and no one lived with the wicked Lady except the faithful old servant, Margaret Thirlston, who stayed with her to the last, followed her to the grave, and died soon after.

“Her son and his wife were sought for by Jane Whinmore on her arrival here. She gave them a home and everything they wanted as house-keeper and farm-manager at the Hall. And at the death of Giles Thirlston, his son Ralph became farm-­manager in his place. He continued there till ‘t’ Leddy’s’ death, when he settled at the little wayside inn which you have seen, and which he calls ‘Leddy Jane’s Gift.’ ”

* * * *

I have but little more to say. Mr. Erle and I sought long for the hidden treasure. We found it, after reading a letter secreted in the escritoire, addressed to ‘My youngest nephew’s youngest son.’ In that letter directions were given for recovering the hidden jewels of the family. They were buried outside the garden fence, on the open moor, on the very spot where I can swear I saw the figure of a man with a sword—my great-grandfather, Graham Whinmore.

After I married, we came to live in the south; and I took every means to let my little estate of Whinmore. To my regret the Hall has never found a tenant, and it is still without a tenant after these twenty-five years.

Will any reader of Once a Week make me an offer? They shall have it cheap.

So the snow lay white and untrodden outside the old country-house, and within there was laughter and life and bustle. The little black-eyed governess was as busy as any one. Those sharp orbs of hers seemed never at fault; and did the general committee of management find themselves at a stand-still, as was sometimes the case, there was always Miss Dormer to the rescue. But Philip Carlyon’s experiences of Miss Dormer’s skill and usefulness were of a far more personal kind. More than once in the little occurrences of the day he recognised the little governess’s hand. Did Miss Layford, for instance, engaged upon the decoration of the large oil-paintings in the dining-room, require an extra nail, there was Miss Dormer at Philip’s elbow, with a whole boxful to be sent to her assistance. Was there a decoration requiring the skill or power of more than one pair of hands, Mr. Carlyon and Miss Layford were decided by Miss Dormer to be the very couple to execute it the most successfully. And these were but solitary instances in the day’s work. When Philip came to look back upon it, it seemed to be made up of such. And what was the meaning of it all? “Not any disinterested affection for me,” said Philip; “nor for Miss Layford either, for I believe she hates both of us. Is it Jack? and does her ladyship find us rather in the way?” Here Phil paused, for it struck him just at this point that he might have made a good many shots and not come nearer the mark. “Have I hit it?” quoth Jack’s friend. “Well, keep your eye on him, madame; but I shall keep an eye on him too.” It was quite dark before all was done; but the débris of leaves and berries was swept away at last. The younger girls and Miss Dormer had gone to their tea in the schoolroom; Miss Layford drew one of the comfortable old-fashioned chairs to the hall-fire, and seated herself with the grateful air of one whose task is done.

“You are tired,” said Philip, coming to her side.

“Well, yes, just a wee bit; aren’t you?”

“I! not a bit. I am only sorry it’s over.”

“You had better go over and help them at the church; I’ll engage to say they won’t have done there for the next two hours;” and Jack smiled grimly at his own pleasantry.

“Thank you, my dear Jack; but I think, unless Miss Layford particularly wishes to get rid of me, I’ll stay where I am.”

“I can tell you what Miss Layford does particularly wish,” interposed Margaret, “and that is for some tea. If you will ring that bell at your elbow, Mr. Carlyon, we’ll have it here. There will be plenty of time to dress afterwards; the people won’t be here before seven. Early hours, you think, Mr. Carlyon; but we keep old Christmas in an old-fashioned way.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” Mr. Carlyon answered. Perhaps he was bethinking himself of a certain green-leaved, glistening, berried bough he himself had hung not so very far from where Miss Layford was sitting now. Who knows?

At this moment a little figure appeared in the circle. It was the most round-headed and round-eyed of the little robins. “I want Margaret, please,” lisped the little bird shyly from Mr. Carlyon’s arms, for he had caught her up.

“You can’t have Margaret,” said Tiny’s captor, blushing in the dark at his own temerity. Perhaps some one else blushed too; but, as I have said, it was in the dark, so who can tell? But Miss Tiny evidently did not intend to allow the remark to pass.

“She isn’t your Margaret!” she said, fired with a sudden boldness; “put me down!” And then Miss Tiny actually kicked.

“Encore, Tiny!” cried Jack. But Tiny was released.

“That was naughty!” said Margaret, trying to look solemn.

Tiny put up a pitiable lip that threatened tears, seeing which, cruel Margaret took her in her lap and kissed her.

“I don’t like him!” Tiny confided, in perfectly distinct tones.

“Hush!” whispered Margaret.

But Tiny was not to be so easily extinguished. “Why, do you?” And Tiny started bolt upright, her tears and troubles alike forgotten before this new, and evidently objectionable, phase of the affair. Flop came to the rescue; and very much after the Flop fashion it proved.

“Tiny dear,” said she, “you must not talk like that; ladies never like gentlemen, unless,” added the oracle, as a brilliant afterthought, “unless they ask them to—you know.”

After which words of wisdom, Flop smilingly proceeded to hand round the tea, which had just arrived, calmly wondering to herself the while what it was that seemed to be amusing every one so much.

But satisfactory as Flop’s argument might be to herself, to Tiny’s comprehension it by no means mended matters; and for poor Margaret, she was not safe out of the little affair yet.

Tiny’s voice was again uplifted; it was very plaintive this time.

“You won’t like him, not even if he does ask you, will you, Margey? Margey!” It was no use saying, Hush!

Tiny was not looking at all like a shy little robin now, much more indeed like an inquisitive pert little sparrow. But happily at this juncture Miss Dormer’s voice was heard inquiring for her stray pupil.

“Tea is quite over in the schoolroom,” said the governess, making her way into the circle.

“And we have not even heard to what we are indebted for the honour of Miss Tiny’s visit,” said Mr. Carlyon.

“I think Tiny must stop and have tea here, if you please, Miss Dormer,” said Margaret; “then she can tell us what she wants.”

So it was settled, and the invitation being extended to Miss Dormer, she remained also; and then, between delicious morsels of thin bread-and-butter from Margaret’s own plate, Tiny proffered her request: “Please, Margaret, may we sit up to supper?”

Margaret looked grave and shook her head.

“I am afraid not, Tiny.”

“Just this once;” it was Mr. Carlyon.

“Well, just this once then,” Margaret yielded; “to oblige Mr. Carlyon, you know, Tiny.”

Tiny rounded her great blue eyes as if she did not know anything of the kind, and then she actually condescended so far as to smile on her former enemy.

“I wish I had such a good sister,” said Mr. Carlyon.

“She’s as good as a sister,” said Tiny, laying her soft cheek caressingly to Margaret’s face.

“Is she?” Mr. Carlyon answered, with a little flush and laugh, though no one else appeared to see anything that was noticeable in the little girl’s simple speech.

“You have no sister, Mr. Carlyon?” asked Margaret’s soft voice a moment or two later.

“I had one; but she is dead.”

“I—I am very sorry; I beg your pardon,” stammered Margaret, red and troubled.

“Pray don’t, Miss Layford,” Philip interposed. “My poor sister has been dead many years now. I often speak of her,” he went on, anxious, as Margaret felt, to reassure her. “Her life was not of the happiest; she married against my father’s wishes a cousin of ours, and was never forgiven, poor soul, until too late.”

Philip Carlyon ended with a little sigh, and for a moment no one seemed inclined to speak.

“And you, Mr. Carlyon,” a voice asked presently, “do you too object—to this marrying of cousins, I mean?”

Perhaps Miss Dormer, for she it was, took Mr. Carlyon a little by surprise; at any rate he paused a moment or two before replying­.

“I object to it, Miss Dormer, so far that I would never encourage it.”

“You would interfere even to prevent it?”

“That would depend entirely upon my right to do so or not.”

“But you think it wrong?” persisted the wiry voice.

“I have said that I object,” answered Mr. Carlyon sharply, with a wild inclination upon him to say something more, and what he would have called ‘shut the woman up.’

What, on earth, did she mean by pestering him for his opinions like that! But ‘the woman’ was not to be shut up.

“Ah, yes, you object,” she echoed softly, happily ignorant of the precise nature of Mr. Carlyon’s ruminations; “many people do, you know—most people.”

“I don’t think you know anything about it, Miss Dormer,” broke in Jack bluntly; “it’s a thing that’s done every day; and I don’t see what you, nor Carlyon either, for that matter, have got to do with it, that you should go prejudicing people’s minds.”

“I, my good fellow!” cried Phil, in a positive whirl of amazement. But Miss Dormer said nothing.

Margaret Layford rose: “I think it is time to dress,” she said quietly, and broke up the circle.

CHAPTER II

The Layfords’ guests that Christmas-eve consisted merely of some half-dozen or so of near neighbours with their families, and, it may be, here and there a chance nephew, niece, or visitor. It was an annual affair, this Layford gathering, and was just what all such gatherings should be, if they are not; and Jack Layford’s friend was not the man to feel, or to let others feel him, a stranger in such scenes. He was one of themselves from the very first, ready for anything and everything; the only wonder appeared to be, how they had ever done without him. The charades, for instance, had never been so successful. The way in which Mr. Carlyon made love to Margaret Layford! “O, really, you know,” as one fat old lady observed, “one felt almost as if they hadn’t any business to be looking!”►And then there was Jack. The way in which Jack glared as the crest-fallen rival in the last scene—the word was “checkmate”—no one had ever seen him act anything like it before. After the charades, there was a game in which two of the company left the room, whilst the others fixed upon some proverb to be afterwards discovered by the banished ones. Mr. Carlyon, when his turn came, found himself with Miss Layford for companion; and with the consciousness, moreover, that it was somehow or other Miss Dormer’s handiwork again. But he was not going to trouble himself as to the how or even the wherefore of his bit of good fortune; his only anxiety just now was to make the best use of it.

Do you want to know how our friend set to work? Would you like very much to hear what took place under the holly and mistletoe in the old hall, where these two young people found themselves alone? I think I know some one who would have given his ears to know. But if the dear old holly, or mistletoe either, only whispered one-half of what goes on under their green boughs, who would have faith in them any longer? Should we not rather come to hate the sight of them for their treachery? I shall only tell you that there was a mistletoe-bough—but that you already know—and that it was very near, very near indeed, that Jack found the two standing, when he suddenly opened the drawing-room door, and in rather a surly voice bade them come in. Perhaps the culprits themselves looked a little bit conscious; but what was it to Jack if they did? What was it to any one, if you come to that! You may shake your head and look pious, Miss Propriety; but what was mistletoe made for, do you suppose? and above all, what was it hung under the lamp in the old hall for, that Christmas-eve—can you tell me that?

Love—and whatever the answer to the above questions may be, from mistletoe to love is not such a very great stretch, even for the imagination—love, I was about to observe, is apt to make us all somewhat selfish, even the best of us; and so occupied was Philip Carlyon with his own affairs this same snowy Christmas-eve, that he had little or no eyes for those of his friend. Had it not been so, he must have seen that this same friend of his was being thrown in the little black-eyed governess’s way a great deal more than was at all desirable. The great burly fly was setting his feet farther and farther in the cunningly-spread web, with the little spider smiling to herself at the other end, to see what a great stupid fly it was; and there was no one to the rescue.

To Phil Carlyon this night there was a glamour over everything. The people—kindly commonplace people enough probably—were the nicest people he had ever met. The old ones, the best, the most genial of old souls; the girls, the nicest and prettiest of young ones; even Miss Dormer, viewed in the universal rose-tint, was almost tolerable. But somehow it never got beyond the almost with her. It seemed to Phil, as he went over it all that night, or rather morning, by his own fire, like a page out of a fairy-tale or a scene out of a pantomime; for, you see, he knew what had taken place under the mistletoe in the great hall, if we do not. The prince and princess had met at last, and now there was nothing to do but to live happily ever after. Bed seemed a grand mistake to Philip that night. “To sleep; perchance to dream!” Why, what dreams, the wildest, the most blissful, could come up to this grand reality of his? But he turned in at last, nevertheless, and went to sleep; and dreamt too, for that matter. He had been asleep, and dreaming, perhaps an hour, when the door of his room was suddenly opened, and Phil—who was at this moment being united to Miss Dormer, gracefully attired in the dining-room curtains, with the lamp and its bunch of mistletoe by way of head-dress—awoke with a start to see his friend Jack standing, candle in hand, by his bed-side.

Bewildered by the sudden apparition, and but half awake, Phil sat up, blinking owl-like and silent at Jack and his candle.

“By Jove!” he cried at length, “then that was the hall-lamp!” And then Phil, moved thereto by the recollection of his dream, fell back upon his pillow and fairly roared.

It was Jack’s turn to stare now; and there is no saying how long Phil’s fit might have continued, had not his eyes suddenly fallen on the white face still by his bed-side.

“What is it, Jack?” he cried, starting up, sobered and wide awake.

Jack went over to the mantelshelf and put down his candle, then he came back to the bed.

“Phil,” he said, “do you believe in ghosts?”

If Jack had not been so evidently in earnest, it is more than probable that his friend would have had another relapse. As it was, he only answered, “I never have done;” as if, with Jack’s face before him, he would not take upon himself to say what he might not do before the interview was over.

“Phil,” said white-faced Jack, “if there are such things, I have seen one to-night.”

“Bad dreams,” suggested Phil, thinking of his own, perhaps.

But Jack shook his head. “I was as wide awake as you are.”

Carlyon lay looking at him for a moment or two silently. “Wait a bit,” said he at last; “I see there’s a little fire still; poke it up, Jack, and I’ll get into my dressing-gown. Give me my slippers, there’s a good fellow; and now let’s talk it over comfortably.”

Jack had got up a tolerably cheerful fire, and the two drew their chairs before it.

“Now then, Jack, for the ghost.”

“Don’t laugh, old fellow. I give you my word I wouldn’t go through it again for a fortune—ghost or no ghost.”

“I’m not going to laugh, Jack, I promise you; so there now, fire away!”

“Well then, to begin at the beginning, I was not long getting into bed; and I should say that my getting to bed and to sleep were about one and the same thing. I must have been asleep some time, for at first I thought it was morning, and that it was Blake outside with the shaving-water.”

“Thought what was?”

“Why, the ghost, or whatever it was. I woke up in a sudden kind of way—all in a moment, you know—and there it stood, just at the foot of the bed, so that the light from the window close by fell right on it, and I could see that it, whatever it was, was all white, and staring, and wrapped up in what looked like grave-clothes; that is, the head was all wrapped up. I haven’t got over it yet.” Jack shivered in a kind of apology.

“Never mind, old man; I daresay it was deuced unpleasant.” And Phil gave a sturdy poke at the logs before them, as if even he would not be quite beyond the influences of a cheering blaze.

“At first,” Jack went on, “I thought if it would only speak, it would be better than the horrible silence; but when it did speak, it was more horrible still. I may as well make a clean breast of it, and tell you that I fairly bolted under the bedclothes. When I could positively bear it no longer, I screwed up my courage and came to the surface once more; but the thing was gone.”

“But not before you had heard what it had got to say?”

Jack stammered and flushed in an unaccountable manner.

“Phil,” he said earnestly, laying his hand on his friend’s knee, “there’s not another man in this world I would have told all this to.”

“I can believe it, Jack, and I shouldn’t have liked it a bit more than you did; so tell me all about it, old boy, what it said, and everything.”

“That’s the queerest part of it,” Jack began, anything but white-faced now. “You remember what you were telling us in the hall,—about your sister and your cousin, you know?”

Phil nodded, a trifle wonderingly.

“Well, that’s what it was.”

Phil could only stare at Jack blankly.

“You take me?” the latter asked.

“Can’t say I do—unless,” Phil added, “you mean me to understand that a visitant from the other world comes to talk to you about my relations, which, to say the least of it, sounds rather unlikely.”

“I didn’t mean that—at least, not exactly; it was a kind of—in short, a warning—there!”

“Concerning marriage and cousinship?”

Jack nodded.

Phil came bolt upright in his chair. “Supper,” he said shortly.

Jack made a movement of impatience.

“My dear Jack, there’s no other way out of it—there really isn’t. Now, just ask yourself, for one moment, who should come, on the strength of my poor sister’s story, from the other world, to trouble you with the desirability or undesirability of a match between you and any cousin in Christendom?”

“My mother.” Jack’s voice was very low, and Jack’s face, that had been very red, was white again. His companion gave a long low whistle. “I daresay you think me mad or an idiot, Phil; but I have seen it, and that makes all the difference.”

“And I’ll see it too, Jack; somebody’s been playing you a trick, depend upon it. They may try it again probably; and then we’ll be even with ’em, or at least we’ll try.”

“But I sleep with my door locked.”

“Humph! where did you find your key—just now, I mean?”

“Why, that was rather funny, now you mention it—on the floor.”

“And the door was still locked?”

“Yes, it was locked all right. But why do you ask? Have you got some wonderful idea in that long head of yours?”

“Never you mind my head; we aren’t going to talk any more about this affair to-night; and as I don’t suppose you care exactly to go back to your own room, do you take my bed; I shall do very well on this chair.”

But Jack would not hear of this arrangement; so Philip himself went back to his bed and his dreams, while Jack sat on by the dying fire, sleep coming once more, even to him, at last.

Before the two descended to breakfast the next morning, it was agreed between them that nothing more should be said concerning the mystery of the night. Whatever poor Jack may have done, his friend did not let the night’s events or their solution interfere in any way with his appetite for breakfast, or with his enjoyment of the walk after it to the church by the side of his newly-discovered princess. For him the fairy tale was going on still, and Jack and his troubles had, for the time, no place in it.

It was not the pleasantest of wintry days. The sky promised more snow, and a cutting north wind drove the stray flakes that were already falling into the faces of the Manor party like bits of veritable ice, till poor Flop’s nose threatened to leave her face altogether. But to Philip Carlyon the day was perfect, and the blasts of north wind might have been zephyrs from Paradise itself. Miss Layford, too, looked warm and smiling, but that might have been only the reflection of her companion’s face—at times, it must be confessed, rather near to hers. There was the Squire, beaming and cheery, surrounded by his laughing, chatting ones. Miss Dormer, too, was bright and cheerful; so, perhaps, it was only poor Jack who really felt what an unpleasant day it was. “The sort of weather one would like to kick, by Jove!” growled Jack. But even Jack thawed into a happier frame of mind under Miss Dormer’s care. Besides, returning, the wind was no longer in their faces, and it was decidedly pleasanter.

Philip Carlyon and Margaret, dropping behind, soon lost sight of the rest of the party; and when next a turn of the road brought them again to view, they saw that Jack and Miss Dormer had detached themselves from the rest, and were walking briskly on ahead. At the sight all Philip’s misgivings touching the little governess and his friend came back to him. In his own happiness poor foolish Jack’s had been well-nigh overlooked altogether. Philip stole an inquiring glance at the face by his side; he saw quite enough to know that he need not be afraid to speak.

“How long has this been going on?”

Margaret knew what this meant, and answered at once.

“I can’t say—not exactly, that is—but it has never been as bad as this before. O Phil, can’t you save him?” and Margaret’s soft brown eyes, with the bright tear-drops in them, were lifted beseechingly to her companion’s face.

What man, so adjured, would not have pledged himself to an even less-hopeful task? Of course Phil promised.

“You remember our charade last night? It shall be ‘checkmate’ with my lady yet; never fear.”

“Poor dear Jack, only fancy his marrying that dreadful woman!”

“She must go,” said Phil; “that’s settled. By the way, that reminds me to ask why she is not away for her holidays, like other people?”

“She always says she has nowhere to go.”

“Humph! I’m afraid we must trouble her to find somewhere.”

They were in sight of the house now, and Philip Carlyon stopped.

“Wait a moment, Margaret,” he said; “you know who I am going to see this morning, and what I am going to say; you don’t repent?”

“Repent! O Phil!”

She said nothing more; but Mr. Philip Carlyon appeared to be more than satisfied.

CHAPTER III

Coming out from the library some half-hour later, Philip Carlyon stumbled on, or rather was stumbled upon by, the inevitable Flop, and a shower of miscellaneous articles—books, a drawing-board, paint-pencils, and so forth—were incontinently delivered at his feet.

“Dear me!” bleated poor Flop, when the din had a little subsided, “how the things in this house do tumble about! And perhaps you’ve got corns, and that drawing-board is dreadfully sharp and heavy too; it nearly cut poor little Tiny’s head open the other day; she’d got right under it when I let it fall, you know—poor silly little dear!”

“Nearly as silly as I was,” said Philip, laughing. “I believe the confounded thing has all but taken my foot off.”

“Has it really, though? O dear, dear, I’m so sorry! And the paint-box—it’s one of those tin things—moist colours, you know—has cut my finger, I think, see!” and Flop thrust forth a bleeding digit to within an inch of Phil’s nose; for poor Flop, short of sight herself, laboured under the delusion that all her fellow-mortals were similarly afflicted.

“So it is!” cried Phil. “Here, let me wrap it up, poor thing!”

They were standing in one of the hall-windows, and Philip—poor Flop’s wounded hand in his—was making some laughing comment, when a shadow from outside fell upon them, and, looking up, there was Jack’s fair face, with the honest blue eyes opened to their utmost, staring at them in a kind of blank amaze.

“Come in!” cried Philip. “I want to speak to you.”

Jack, thus called upon, marched round to the great door, kicking off the snow from his boots as he went. Flop was gone, and Philip was standing by the hall-fire making a little pretence of warming himself as Jack entered.

“Well?” inquired Jack, the surprised stare not quite gone out of his blue eyes yet.

“The fact is, Jack, I’ve got something to say to you—something to tell you. Can’t you guess within a little what it’s about, old fellow?”

But Jack only stared still more, and shook his head.

“I think you could guess if you liked, Jack; but if you won’t, why I suppose I must tell you. I have asked your sister, and—she is going to take me for better for worse—there!”

The stare of amazement on Jack’s face had been as nothing compared to that which it now wore. For the best part of a minute Jack seemed, in his astonishment, utterly speechless. At the end of that time he had managed to recover himself sufficiently to utter the one word, “Flop!” It was really not so very surprising when you consider the little picture Jack had looked upon a moment since from the great hall-window; and yet Phil found something so irresistibly comic in the idea, that he burst into one of his roars, to poor Jack’s still greater mystification.

“Flop’s one of the best souls going,” said Phil, when he had sufficiently recovered himself to attempt an explanation; “but it isn’t Flop; and not being Flop, my dear Jack, and Tiny not looking upon me in quite the favourable light that I could wish—why, it’s Margaret!”

The old uneasiness, all that has so puzzled him in his friend Jack—but laid aside in these later hours—flashed back upon Philip Carlyon the moment Margaret’s name had left his lips. A white face fronted him, but it was only for a moment; the next it was buried in Jack’s sturdy arms upon the old carved mantleshelf before him.

“Jack, Jack, what is it? For heaven’s sake, speak, man!”

But Jack neither spoke nor moved.

“There’s a mystery somewhere,” cried Philip desperately; “I’ve felt it all along; I saw it the first day I came; what is it, old man? Jack, dear old Jack, what is it?”

At the touch of Phil’s hand, at the sound of his troubled voice, poor Jack lifted his face. With a great effort he looked straight at Philip, and put out one hand towards him.

“Phil,” he said, with a little attempt at a smile, “never mind me. I shall be all right in a minute or two. I see it all now. I thought you were trying to cut me out, old fellow, and got savage. I thought you knew—everybody does; I daresay I never told you; I took it for granted you knew—Margaret is my cousin. She has always lived here, one of us, and I have been fool enough to fancy she always might; that is all, that is the grand mystery, Phil. I have been a fool!” and poor Jack tried a laugh that was more dreary even than the smile had been.

“If I had only known,” Philip began.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. I see it now; she could never have cared for me, Phil; don’t say any more about it. I must get over it as best I can.”

“Come for a walk,” said Philip; “there’s nothing like a good stretch; try it, old fellow!”

“Not with you, Phil; let me go by myself. I shall turn up again at dinner; and,” these were Jack’s parting words at the open door, “whatever you do, don’t trouble yourself about—about this, you know, Phil; I shall be all right.”

Philip Carlyon stood watching poor Jack’s big figure striding over the snow; he stood looking out over the white stretch of lawn and meadow long after the lonely figure had vanished from the scene. He was going over in his own mind the events of these past few days. The grand tangle of it all—poor Jack’s irritation, little Tiny’s simple speech, even the ghost mystery itself,—all lay unravelled at Philip Carlyon’s finger-ends. Margaret Layford not Jack’s sister, but his cousin; what was there that the simple fact did not explain? There was one thing now quite clear to Philip’s mind: if that small Macchiavelli, Miss Dormer, got hold of poor miserable Jack in his present frame of mind, the checkmate Phil had so glibly promised himself and Margaret would not be so easy of accomplishment. One result of his cogitations was, that Philip decided to take Miss Layford into his confidence with regard to the little affair of the previous night. A walk after luncheon was easily arranged, and then Margaret learned the whole story.

“Jack was his poor mother’s favourite,” she said. “Miss Dormer, I suppose, has managed to learn so much; our conversation of last evening must have suggested to her scheming little brain the idea of making the use of the knowledge she has done.”

“And will do again, depend upon it,” rejoined Philip. “Meanwhile not a word of our engagement, nor of our suspicions of herself; of the latter not a hint even to Jack. I shall change rooms with him to-night; and I think I may venture to say that, for the future, we shall find our friend the ghost tolerably well laid.”

So it was arranged. Jack appeared at the dinner-table in decidedly higher spirits than was customary even with him. As for the little governess, it was just as Philip had predicted. The great stupid fly was hers past all doubt; and as the evening wore on, there was a flash of triumph in the dark eyes that their owner was scarcely at pains to conceal.

“Patience!” whispered Philip, as he pressed Margaret’s hand at parting, and saw the anxious glances she was casting towards her cousin and Miss Dormer, who were also saying good-night at the farther end of the great drawing-room—“patience; it will be our turn soon!”

“But if she should—O Phil!”

“But she sha’n’t; she shall marry me first—there!”

Whereupon Margaret laughed, and going her way, with Miss Dormer following her, left the coast clear to the two young men. Jack came up to the fireplace, where his friend Philip stood, looking rather foolish—feeling even more foolish than he looked, if the truth were told. Philip made way for him, but said nothing.

“Can you do nothing but stare at a fellow?” growled Jack at length; “if you must stare at somebody, there’s the glass!”

“Thank you, my dear Jack,” returned Philip blandly; “I don’t doubt the sight would be charming; but just at this present moment I am wanting to look at the biggest, blindest”—and here Phil was speaking in the biggest capitals—“dearest, blundering young fool the World ever turned out; and she has done pretty well in that way.”

Jack was for a moment inclined to be very wrathful, but the glamour of the day was falling from him—as also of the champagne at dinner—and he was by this time almost, if not quite, like the possessed of old, “in his right mind,” which for the last few hours or so he most certainly had not been.

“Phil,” he said sadly, “I know you would help me if you could, and so would Margaret; but it’s too late.”

“Don’t tell me it’s gone so far as that,” cried Phil savagely.

Jack’s face grew very red.

“It’s gone so far, that, in honour—”

“Honour—bah!” echoed his companion contemptuously. “But there, go to bed, go to bed, and pray Heaven to help the greatest fool ever made;” which was a mistake of Phil’s; for Heaven had had nothing to do with it, as he ought to have known.

“You’re going to my room, you know!” he called out, as Jack moved off.

“I know!” Jack made answer dismally.

All the ghosts in the universe would have been welcome to him beside this new horror he had been at such pains to raise.

When, some quarter of an hour after, Philip Carlyon followed his friend to the room he had made over to him for the night, he found Jack still dressed, seated upon the bed-side, one of the dreariest objects he had ever had the misfortune to gaze upon.

“Come, Jack,” cried he cheerily, “aren’t you going to bed to-night?”

But Jack was not to be cheered.

“Bed!” groaned the wretched young fellow; “what’s the good of bed, or anything else? I wish I was dead and buried.”

“I daresay you’ll be accommodated some day; so don’t let that distress you, unless you are in a very particular hurry and can’t afford to wait.”

“O Phil, old man, don’t chaff a fellow! I verily believe I’m the most miserable dog alive.”

“It’s well Miss Dormer does not hear you!” laughed the unsympathising Phil.

“Don’t mention her!” cried Jack, with a genuine shiver.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Jack,” said Philip, seating himself by his friend’s side; “if you’ll go to bed like a Christian, instead of sitting groaning there like an old woman at a prayer-meeting, I’ll do what I can to get you out of this hobble; and I think I see a way. But if you don’t—by Jove!” cried Philip threateningly, “the little governess shall marry you to-morrow if she likes. So now, good-night.”

Jack, another man in these last few seconds, started up.

“Do you really mean it, though? I’ll bless you for ever and a day!”

“You turn-in, then,” said Phil.

“All right!” said Jack; and Philip actually heard him whistling as he went his way to Jack’s late bedroom.

Here it appeared that our friend had taken care to provide himself with the various trifling necessaries for a comfortable night—for it was not his intention either to go to bed or to sleep, as you may suppose. His first move was to lock the door; having done which, he discovered with a smile that the key was brought into such a position that another applied from without would send it out softly upon the mat beneath. So far so good. Philip then doctored the fire, exchanged his coat for the more luxuriant folds of the most inviting of dressing-gowns, and lastly, after mixing himself a glass of something steaming and fragrant enough to have tempted even a ghost itself to become for the time mortal, sat himself down in his easy-chair, and with slippered feet upon the fender, set himself to read. Twelve, one, two, from the clock on the landing outside, and still Mr. Carlyon read on. Three. Mr. Carlyon closed his book, and seemed to listen. There was some little life in the fire still, and this he left burning. The candles he carefully extinguished; and then stretched himself upon the bed. It was not too soon; there was the the soft opening of a distant door, a scarcely audible footstep creeping cautiously towards his own, a halt on the mat outside, a moment’s breathing space. Then the key that was within the room fell, not noisily, but dulled by the soft carpeting, the lock was turned, the door crept slowly open, and then—enter ghost! Philip, waiting expectant as he was, felt himself giving an involuntary shiver. Prepared even to get some enjoyment out of the affair, Phil felt that he could for the moment realise just a something of what poor Jack’s feelings had been. But it must be allowed that this was only for a moment. With a smile that surely meant mischief, could the poor ghost but have seen it, Philip followed with his half-closed eyes the white-draperied one’s progress until the position between the window and the bed was gained. Yes, there it stood, just as Jack had described it; not tall certainly, but ghostly enough for twenty ghosts.

“Now for act the second,” said Phil to himself.

Act the second commenced by the utterance of Jack Layford’s name twice, thrice it may be, in the most sepulchral tones of which a rather soprano voice is capable. At the third call, the occupant of the bed showed signs of consciousness, as it was evidently necessary he should do if the play was to be properly carried out.

As Philip had calculated, the cue was taken. It was probably much the same oration as that to which the room’s owner of the previous night had been treated, and Philip Carlyon heard it politely to the end.

Suddenly through the room there rang a stifled cry, almost shriek, but it certainly did not proceed from Mr. Carlyon. That gentleman—polite, smiling—stood, one hand upon the fast-closed door, the other waving a courteous adieu to poor Jack’s terror, now white, appealing, frantic, all but at his feet. Her retreat thus cut off, Miss Dormer—for of course it was she—as the only thing left her to do, was down on her knees, imploring piteously for mercy at her captor’s hands. Alas, poor ghost! There was not much pretence of disguise or concealment now; the time for that was past.

“I will promise anything,” groaned the wretched little woman, “only let me go, dear Mr. Carlyon! I will leave the house to-morrow—to-night! I will never see John Layford again! Only let me go!”

Mr. Carlyon was not so terrible as he looked—and the firelight showed him awfully dark and stern to the miserable woman at his feet. “Get up, Miss Dormer!” he said authoritatively. “Don’t kneel there! You shall go, on your own terms—that is, you leave this place at once, and never see my friend Jack again. The Squire must of course know all; but it shall go no further. And now go.”

So, defeated, humbled, almost pitiable in her humiliation, the poor plotter slunk out.

“Check, I think,” said Phil, with a grim smile, as he once more closed the door, not taking the trouble this time to lock it.

And now what more is there to tell? At the breakfast-table that morning there was no Miss Dormer, but there was a clamour and babel of voices quite beyond all the endeavours of Flop to still; and when the two little robins came to be informed, in answer to their wondering inquiries, that Miss Dormer would be no more seen by them on that, or indeed any other, morning, however future, the tumult was redoubled. Little Tiny, for her part, at once arriving at the melancholy conclusion of Miss Dormer’s having unexpectedly deceased during the night—after the manner of a favourite canary about a month since—commenced a tributary howl to the memory of the departed, but suddenly stopped short—moved, possibly, by some flash of consolation concerning lessons that would not have to be said; and, changing her small mind altogether upon the subject, laughed instead, greatly to the comfort of all parties.

“That’s right,” cried Flop approvingly. “Of course we are all very sorry; but we aren’t going to cry, are we, Jack?”

Jack, very red, mumbled something about “girls” and “nonsense;” and Philip and Margaret were fain to hide their heads behind the great silver tea-urn.

After breakfast, and when the two were standing alone by the dining-room fire, talking together in the low-voiced happy way peculiar to young people in their situation, Jack came in equipped for a journey. There was a certain sad look in the young fellow’s eyes as they fell upon the two, but he went bravely up to where they stood and put out his hand. “Good-bye, Margey,” he said; “and good-bye to you, too, old fellow. I’m going back to town; but you needn’t follow yet. I shall be down at Easter, Meg; and I suppose,” said Jack, with a little smile, and laying a kindly hand on Phil Carlyon’s shoulder, “that I may bring with me the best friend I ever had.”

The door was unlocked and thrown open, and Mrs. Ordie drew a little back to give space for him to enter. No one came in. Mrs. Ordie looked out then, holding the candle above her head. She could not see him anywhere.

“Take the light,” she said to the maid, and she stepped outside beyond the por­tico, and looked about. “George!” she called out, “where are you? The door is open.” But Captain Ordie neither ap­peared nor answered.

“Well, I never knew such an extraor­dinary thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Ordie. “Where can he have gone?”

“Ma’am,” said the servant, who began now to be pretty well awake, “I don’t understand. Did you say any body was come?”

“My husband is come. Captain Ordie.”

“From Mrs. Beecher’s?” asked the woman.

“Mrs. Beecher’s, no! What should bring him at Mrs. Beecher’s? He must have come direct from Portsmouth.”

“But he must have come to the door here from the Beechers’,” continued the servant. “He couldn’t have come any other how. The gates are locked.”

In her wonder at his appearance, this fact had not struck Mrs. Ordie. “One of them must have been left unfastened,” she said, after thinking. “That was very careless, Martha. It is your place to see to it when Richard’s out. Papa once turned a servant away for leaving the gates open at night.”

“I locked both the gates at sundown,” was the woman’s reply. “And the key’s hanging up in its place in the kitchen.”

“Impossible,” repeated Mrs. Ordie. “The Captain came in by the upper one, the furthest from here. I heard him the minute he put his foot on the gravel, and knew his step. You must have thought you locked it. George!” added Mrs. Ordie, in a louder tone. “George!”

There was no answer. No sound what­ever broke the stillness of the night.

“Captain Ordie!” she repeated, “Cap­tain Ordie!”

The servant was laughing to herself, taking care that her young mistress did not see her. She believed that Mrs. Ordie had been doing what she did—dropping asleep; and had dreamt she heard some­body on the gravel.

“I know what it is,” cried Mrs. Ordie, briskly. “He has never been here before, and finding the door was not immediately opened to him, has gone on to the Beech­ers, thinking this the wrong house.”

She ran down the narrow path as she spoke, which branched off from the portico, round by the kitchen window; and the maid followed her, first stopping to put the candle inside the hall. It was light, now they were out.

But nothing was to be seen of George Ordie. The curate’s house, a small one, was closed, and presented the appearance of a dwelling whose inmates were at rest; the blinds were drawn before the windows, and all was still. Mrs. Ordie ran over probabilities in her mind, and came to the conclusion that he could not have gone there. The Beechers were early people, and had no doubt been in bed an hour ago; and had her husband knocked there, he would be waiting at the door still, for they had not had time to come down and let him in.

“It could only have been fancy, ma’am,” cried Martha.

“Silence,” said Mrs. Ordie; “how can it have been fancy? I heard my husband, and saw him.”

“Well, ma’am, I argue so from the gates being fast. He couldn’t have got over ’em because of the spikes.”

“The gates can not be fast,” returned Mrs. Ordie, “and it is foolish in you to persist in the falsehood—only to screen your own carelessness.”

“I wish you’d just please to come and look at the gates,” retorted Martha.

“I will,” said Mrs. Ordie, starting off with alacrity, anxious to convict Martha to her face. “It is an utter impossibility that Captain Ordie could have come in at a high, locked gate, with spikes on the top; he would not attempt to do so.”

“That’s just what I say,” answered Martha. “I dreamt t’other night,” she muttered to herself, as she followed her mistress, “that a man came down that there path with lovely gownd pieces to sell: I might just as well have riz up the house, and had him routed for.”

They gained the broad walk, and pro­ceeded round towards the gate. Mrs. Ordie put out her hand and tried it. It was locked. Martha sniffed.

“Why, it is like magic!” uttered Mrs. Ordie.

“I was positive and certain about its being locked, ma’am. And that’s why I said it must be fancy. I think it couldn’t have been nothing else.”

Mrs. Ordie was indignant. “Is this gate fancy?” she said, shaking it, in her anger.

“No, that’s a real gate.”

“Then don’t tell me again that my hus­band is fancy. How could I have seen and heard him if he were not come? Cap­tain Ordie!” she called out, once more. “George! where can you have gone to?”

“If he is on the premises, he must be on ’em,” logically argued the servant. “Because there’s no outlet out of ’em, but by these gates.”

“Come to the other gate,” said Mrs. Ordie.

They retraced their steps round the cir­cular path, Mrs. Ordie looking in all direc­tions for a gleam of scarlet, and reached the other gate. It was also locked. Then she went and tried Mr. Beecher’s gate; it was likewise fast; and then she went to their own garden, at the back of the house, and looked and called. She even went into the summer-house, but there was no trace of Captain Ordie. The servant walked with her, half-amused, half­-provoked.

“Can he have slipped in-doors,” mur­mured Mrs. Ordie, “that first time when we had gone down to the Beechers?” And she went in, looked in the sitting-rooms, ascended the stairs to her own room, where the light was, taking the op­portunity to glance at her child, and then looked in the kitchen. But Captain Ordie was nowhere to be seen, and she had never been so much perplexed and puzzled in all her life.

“Then he must have gone on, as I thought, to Mr. Beecher’s,” was her last solution of the enigma. “They were pos­sibly up, and let him in directly. And they are keeping him there till morning, that he may not disturb us, knowing that baby is ill.”

“But about the gate,” interrupted the servant, returning to her stumbling-block, “how could he have got through it?”

“I know he did get through it, and that’s enough,” responded Mrs. Ordie. “He may have managed to climb over it, not finding the bell. Soldiers have ven­turesome spirits. I will go and fetch him. You stop here, Martha, and listen to baby.”

Once more Mrs. Ordie sped to the cu­rate’s. She knocked at the door, and stood back to look up at the house. “They have put him into their spare bed,” she soliloquized; “Mrs. Beecher has kept it made up this fortnight past, ex­pecting their invalid from India. My good­ness! I never thought of it! they have no doubt come together, in the same ship. George may have gone up to Calcutta, and finding James Beecher was coming, have got leave, all in a hurry, and accompanied him.”

But there was still no sign of light or life in the house, and Mrs. Ordie picked up some bits of gravel, and threw them at Mrs. Beecher’s bed-room window. This brought forth the curate, in his nightcap, peeping through the curtains.

“It is I, Mr. Beecher,” she called out. “Have you got Captain Ordie here?”

“Make haste, Anne,” cried the curate, turning his head round to speak to his wife. “It’s Mrs. Ordie. Perhaps the child is in a fit.”

“My husband is come,” repeated Mrs. Ordie. “He is here, is he not?”

“Yes, directly,” answered the curate, imperfectly understanding, but opening the casement about an inch, to speak.

“Is she really worse, Louisa?” exclaim­ed Mrs. Beecher, who now appeared at the window. “I will just throw on a few things, and be with you.”

The curate, believing the matter to be settled, drew in his nightcap, and closed the casement. But Mrs. Ordie’s voice was again heard. “Mr. Beecher! Mr. Beecher! I want you.”

“Dress yourself, my dear,” cried Mrs. Beecher to him, in a flurry. “I dare say they want you to go for Mr. Percival. If the baby is really worse, and it is not Louisa’s fancy, I shall never boast of know­ing children again. It looked as cool and well in the evening as it need look. She is calling again.”

Mr. Beecher reopened the casement. “I am putting on my clothes, Mrs. Ordie. I am coming.”

“But you need not do that. Has your brother come?”

“Who?”

“Your brother: James Beecher.”

“No. Not yet.”

“There’s a ship in, as my husband has arrived. Tell him I am here.”

“We’ll be down in a minute,” called out Mr. Beecher, retiring from the window, and making desperate haste. “Anne, Cap­tain Ordie’s come.”

“Captain Ordie!” exclaimed Mrs. Beecher.

“Mrs. Ordie says so.”

“Then we shall have James here to-­morrow. How very unexpected Captain Ordie’s arrival must have been to his wife! And to find his child ill!”

Mrs. Ordie waited. Mrs. Beecher came down first, in a large shawl, and her bon­net tied over her nightcap. They began to speak at cross purposes.

“Is he coming? Have you told him?” impatiently asked Mrs. Ordie.

“My dear, yes. But he had gone up­stairs in slippers, and his shoes were in the back kitchen. Louisa, you should not have come out yourself, you should have sent. Has not Captain Ordie’s arrival taken you by surprise?”

“I never was so much surprised,” an­swered Mrs. Ordie, standing still, and not offering to stir. “I heard his footstep first, and knew it even in the distance. I am so glad! He must have come with James Beecher.”

“Ay, we shall have James here to-mor­row. But, my dear, let us not lose time. Is the child very ill?”

“She is not worse, there is no hurry,” answered Mrs. Ordie, planting her back against a tree, as deliberately as if she meant to make it her station for the night, and gazing up at the casement which she knew belonged to their spare bedroom. Mrs. Beecher looked at her in surprise. “Will he be long?” she added. “There’s no light.”

“He will be here directly,” said Mrs. Beecher; “he is finding his shoes. I sup­pose Kitty put them in some out-of-the-way place, ready for cleaning in the morn­ing.”

Another pause, and the curate ap­peared.

“O Mr. Beecher! you need not have got up,” was Mrs. Ordie’s greeting. “I am sorry to give you all this trouble.”

“It is no trouble,” he rejoined. “Do you want me to go for Mr. Percival?”

“You are very kind, but we shall not want the doctor to-night: at least I hope not. She has never woke up once since she was laid down. I have been watching her myself: I had her brought down to my own room. Nurse behaved shamefully over it, and I gave her warning. She shall leave to-morrow.”

“Pray let us go on, and see how she is,” said Mrs. Beecher, never supposing but they had been called up by the state of the child, and thinking Mrs. Ordie’s words and delay very strange.

“When he comes. You say he will not be long. Had he undressed?”

“Had who undressed?”

“My husband.”

Mrs. Beecher stared at her with amaze­ment. “I do not understand you, Louisa. For whom are we waiting here?”

“For my husband, of course. You say he is finding his shoes.”

Both Mr. and Mrs. Beecher thought her child’s illness was turning her crazy. “Louisa, you are mystifying us. Is your husband coming out, here, into the gar­den? Are we to wait here for him?”

“Why, you know he is coming out, and of course I shall wait for him. Only think of his travelling in his regimentals! Just as if he were on duty.”

“Where is Captain Ordie?” interposed the curate.

“Well, that’s a sensible question, from you,” laughed Mrs. Ordie. “I suppose he is in your spare bedroom, though I see no light. Or else hunting for his shoes in your kitchen.”

“Child,” said Mrs. Beecher, taking hold of her tenderly, “you are not well. I told you to-day what it would be, if you excited yourself. Let us take you home.”

“I will not go without my husband. There. And what makes him so long? I shall call to him.” She advanced and turned the handle of the door, but it re­sisted her efforts.

“Why, you have locked it!” she ex­claimed, turning to Mr. Beecher. “You have locked him in.”

“Locked who in, child?” said Mrs. Beecher. “There’s nobody in the house but Kitty.”

“My husband is there. Did he not come to you, finding our house shut up?”

“No, certainly not. We have not seen him.”

“Mr. Beecher,” she impatiently uttered, “I asked you when you first came to the window, whether my husband had come here, and you said yes.”

“My dear young lady, I must have misunderstood your question. You know I am a little deaf. All I heard, with refer­ence to Captain Ordie, was, that he had come: I supposed to your house. He has certainly not been to ours.”

“Then what were you talking of?” she reproachfully asked of Mrs. Beecher. “It was shameful to deceive me so! You said he had gone up-stairs in slippers, and was finding his shoes. You know you did.”

“My dear child, I was speaking of Mr. Beecher. I did not know you thought your husband was here. Why did you think so?”

“If he is not here, where is he?” de­manded Mrs. Ordie. “You need not look at me as though you thought I was out of my senses. Do you mean to say you have not seen Captain Ordie?”

“We have not, indeed. We went to bed at ten, and heard nothing, until you threw the gravel at the window.”

“Where can he be? What can he have done with himself?” uttered Mrs. Ordie, in deep tribulation.

“Did he leave you to come to our house? What time did he arrive?”

“It was at twenty-five minutes after eleven. I had got baby in my room, as I told you, and I was sitting by her, read­ing the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ All at once I heard footsteps approaching from the upper gate, and I knew they were my husband’s. He came close, and I looked out, and saw him, and called to him; he did not seem to hear me, but went in to the portico. I ran down to let him in, and to my surprise he was not there then, and I thought he must have come on to you.”

“Then you have not yet spoken with him?” exclaimed Mr. Beecher.

“Not yet.”

“Are you sure it was Captain Ordie? Who opened the gate to him?”

“No one. The gate is locked. There is the strange part of the business.”

“My dear Mrs. Ordie! I fear it must be all a mistake. Captain Ordie would not arrive here on foot, even if he landed unexpectedly; and he could not have got through a locked gate. Perhaps you were asleep.”

“Nonsense,” peevishly replied Mrs. Ordie; “I was as wide awake as I am now. I was deep in the book, and had not felt sleepy. I had got to that part where the fine ladies from town had gone in to neighbor Flamborough’s and caught them all at hunt-the-slipper, Olivia in the middle, bawling for fair play; where Mr. Burchell, afterwards, turns his back upon the company, and calls out ‘fudge’ at the ladies’ high-lived conversation. The bal­lad ‘Edwin and Angelina’ came in, a few pages before, and that I skipped. I assure you I was perfectly awake.”

“I do not think it possible to have been any thing but a delusion,” persisted Mr. Beecher.

“How a delusion?” angrily asked the young lady; “I do not know what you mean. Delusions don’t visit people who are wide awake, and in their sober senses. If my hearing had played me false, Mr. Beecher, my sight could not. I heard my husband, and saw him, and spoke to him: do you think I should speak to somebody I did not know? I am certain it was Cap­tain Ordie. He was in his regimentals: were they a delusion?”

“This is very strange,” said Mrs. Beecher.

“It is more than strange,” was Louisa Ordie’s answer, as she looked dreamily about. “He is in the grounds somewhere, and why he does not come forward, I don’t know.”

The mystery was not cleared up that night. The next day Mrs. Ordie sent for her father, to impart to him the strange circumstance. He adopted his curate’s view of the affair, and indeed the universal view. Mrs. Ordie was much annoyed at their disbelief, and she actually, in spite of her friends, had Captain Ordie advertised for, in the local papers: he was in England, she said, and it would be proved so.

When letters next arrived from India, there was one from Captain Ordie, which gave proof positive that he was not, and had not been, in Europe. Mrs. Ordie was perplexed, and refused to speak of it further, for she only got ridicule.

The weeks went on, and the time fixed for the departure of Mrs. Ordie and her child drew near, but meanwhile the disastrous news had arrived of the outbreak in India, and it was deemed advisable to postpone it.

She was sitting one day in a gloomy mood; not a sorrowful one; more one of anger. She had not heard from her husband for some time, (his last letter was dated April,) and now, as she found, another mail was in, and no news from him. The rising at Delhi, where he was quartered, was known to her, but not as yet the details of its more disastrous features. She did not fear his having fallen, for had any thing happened to him, Mr. Main, or one of her sisters, would have written. They were all at Delhi. Mrs. Beecher came in, looking very pale and sad. Dr. and Mrs. Ling had gone off, in their pony carriage, to the county town, to pick up news. They were extremely uneasy.

“There has been another mail in these two days!” she exclaimed to Mrs. Beecher. “News travels slower to Enton than anywhere. Have you heard from James Beecher? You don’t look well.”

“He is come. He came overland.”

“And you have been worrying yourselves that he is dead! How are things going on over there?”

“Very badly. They can not be worse.”

“Does he know any thing of George?” continued Mrs. Ordie. “I think he might spare a minute from his fighting to write to me. What is the matter with you? You have not bad news for me?” she added, her fears touched, and rising in excitement. “Oh! surely not! Not for me!”

“James’s news, altogether, is very dispiriting,” returned Mrs. Beecher, at a loss how to proceed with her task. “My husband is gone to bring Dr. and Mrs. Ling back. We thought you might like them to be at home.”

“Has George fallen in battle? Have those half-caste rebels shot him down? O——”

“Pray be calm, Louisa!” implored Mrs. Beecher; “if ever you had need of calmness in your life, you have need of it now. Affliction——”

“Is he wounded? Is he dead?” interrupted Mrs. Ordie, with a bitter shriek. “O George! dearest George! and I have been calling you hard names for not writing to me! What is it?”

“There is a great deal to be told, my child. James Beecher was at Delhi in the midst of it.”

Mrs. Ordie suddenly rose from her seat and flew from the room. Mrs. Beecher supposed she had gone to her chamber, and followed her there. Not so. A thin man, looking fearfully ill, fair once, but browned by an Eastern sun, was lying on the sofa in the curate’s parlor, when a young, excited woman came flying in.

“Mr. Beecher,” she uttered, seizing his hands imploringly, “when did it happen? I am Mrs. Ordie.”

“Has my sister-in-law told you—any thing?” he asked, hesitatingly.

“Yes, yes. I know the worst. I want particulars.”

He had risen into an upright posture, though he could scarcely support himself, and she sat down beside him. He was a church missionary, a widower with children. “Are you sure that you can bear the details?” he asked, believing, from her words, that she knew the general facts.

“I am sure. Omit nothing. Mrs. Beecher says you were at Delhi.”

“I went there in the spring, to say farewell to some friends, ere I came home. At Delhi I was taken worse, and lay ill there.”

“But about the rising?”

“I am coming to it. On the second Monday in May, after breakfast, bad news came in. The 3d Light Cavalry had dashed in from Meerut, fully armed, and were slaughtering the Euro­peans. Eighty-five of this regiment had been tried by court-martial at Meerut, for refusing to handle the greased cartridges, and sentenced to imprisonment. Their sentences were read out to them on parade on the previous Saturday, the 9th, and they were sent to jail. On the 10th, Sunday, the regiment rose, released the prisoners, massacred the European officers, their wives and children, and on the 11th came to Delhi, in open revolt. I struggled up, dressed myself, joined my friends where I was staying, and we waited further news. It came in too soon. The mutineers had gone towards Deriowgunge, shooting all the officers they encountered. The brigadier ordered out the 54th Native Infantry and two guns; and, I believe, a detachment of another regiment, but accounts varied. They met the rebels just outside the Cashmere gate, and it was all up, for the Sepoys deserted their officers, and shook hands with the Sowars. Every officer was killed: treacherous, cowardly wretches! they did not spare one.”

She was biting her lips, and striving for calmness, determined to hear all. “Did the officers not resist?”

“All in their power, but they were unarmed,” he said. “The next account that came in was, that the natives had risen and joined the insurrection, were firing the bungalows at Deriowgunge, and ransacking the European residences. The troopers were raging about, destroying life, and when their work was done, the Goojurs,9 who had collected in great numbers, as they were sure to do, followed in their wake, and pillaged every thing, even to the matting. The bank was rifled.”

Mr. Beecher paused, wondering whether he ought to proceed, but her studied calmness deceived him.

“No one knew where to fly for refuge, or what to do: none knew where to put the officers’ wives and children. Many were taken to the Flagstaff Tower, but it was thought unsafe, and had to be abandoned. Some escaped—many, I hope—in conveyances, or on horseback, or on foot. Some of the officers retreated to the cantonment, outside the gates, but the troopers got there when night came, killed them and their wives and children.”

“Were any of my family with them?” she asked, still with unnatural composure.

“No. I will tell you. Before mid-day the ladies of our house, my host’s wife and her cousin, escaped to a close hut, or outhouse, and I managed to hobble there with them. I don’t know how: but it is astonishing the artificial strength that fear brings out. Others also took refuge there, about half a dozen ladies, your two sisters being amongst them, three or four children, and a poor little ensign, as ill and weak as I was. We hoped we were in safety; that the rebels would not think of looking for us there; and some old matting, well wetted, was hung up across the entrance, as if to dry. A Sepoy, who was really faithful, (and there were many such in the city,) sat before it to guard it: many a one, raging after prey, did he turn aside with a well-assumed story that his old mother was in there, dying—let her die in peace.”

“Was my husband there?”

“Not then. No one came near us all day; they dared not, for our sakes; and we bore our suspense and apprehension as we best could, not knowing who was living or who dead, of those dearest to us. What a day that was! We had neither food nor drink; the heat of the weather was fearful; and so many of us stowed together, and closely shut up, rendered the air fetid. We thought it could not be less than 110 degrees. This was not the worst: there were the apprehensions of discovery. We men might brave it, at any rate to appearance, but the poor young women! I believe they would have been glad to die as they cowered there, rather than live to encounter an uncertain fate. I strove to speak comfort to them all, but it was difficult: one or two bore bravely up, and cheered the rest. Late at night, under cover of the darkness, Captain Ordie stole in.”

She raised a faint cry at the name. “My husband!”

“He told us what he could of the progress of the day: it was horribly bad, yet I believed he softened it for their ears: and then began to talk of our own situation. It would be impossible, he said, to keep in the same place of concealment another day, and that we had better join a party who were about to make their escape towards Kurnaul. All seized at the idea eagerly, and wished to start without the delay of an instant. Just then, Mrs. Holt, my friend’s wife, whom the idea of escape had aroused from lethargy inquired after her husband, whom she had not seen since morning­.

“ ‘He is safe, and unharmed,’ replied Captain Ordie.

“ ‘On your honor?’ she said, fearing he might be deceiving her.

“ ‘On my honor. You will see him when we are fairly off; but it was not thought well for more than one of us to venture here.’

“ ‘And my husband?’ added Mrs. Main, who had done nothing but clasp her baby to her breast all day, and weep silently. ‘Is he safe?’

“Captain Ordie answered evasively,” continued Mr. Beecher, “and I knew, by his words and by the turn of his face, that poor Main was gone.”

“Was he? Is he dead?” shuddered Mrs. Ordie.

“I found he had been dead since the afternoon. The troopers had hacked him to pieces.”

“Go on,” she groaned. “George’s turn comes next.”

Mr. Beecher hesitated. “I will finish later,” he suggested.

“No: finish now. You can not leave me in this suspense. It would be cruel.”

“Captain Ordie spoke of the plan of departure. The officers had but three horses amongst them, and the ladies and invalids were to take it in turn to ride, two, with a child, on each horse. And all the party were to keep together. At that moment arose a yell, a horrible yell, which we knew proceeded only from a Sowar, and one of them appeared at the entrance, tearing down the matting. All the light we had was a night-wick in some oil, but we saw his dark face. The children shrieked; the ladies also, and huddled themselves together in a corner; and Captain Ordie advanced to the entrance, and dealt the man a blow on the temple with the butt-end of his pistol.”

“I hope it killed him!” she uttered, her eyes sparkling.

“I think it did, for he lay motionless. Captain Ordie kicked him out of the way, and, throwing himself on his hands and knees, crawled out cautiously to reconnoitre. Alas! we soon heard a struggle outside: two more were upon him.”

“And he was struck down! I know you are going to tell it me,” she uttered, in a low, passionate wail.

Mr. Beecher sat silent, his countenance full of distress.

“Louisa, my darling, be composed,” interrupted Mrs. Beecher, who had stolen in, in search of her. “You know the worst now.”

“Yes, I know the worst,” she moaned. “They killed him there and then.”

“They did,” whispered Mr. Beecher.

“You are sure he was dead?”

“Quite sure. It was instantaneous.”

“Where was he wounded? Let me know. I can bear it.”

“My child, you know enough,” said Mrs. Beecher. “Be content.”

“I will know it,” she frantically said. “George, George! Did they cut him to pieces!”

“They beheaded him.”

She turned sick, and shook violently. But, by a strong effort of control, spoke again. “Finish the history. What became of you, inside?”

“It was all commotion in a moment, dreadful commotion. The poor terrified women attempted to fly; some succeeded, and I hope escaped. Providentially there were only these two troopers; had more been upon us, none would have been left. The first thing I saw distinctly was, that one of them had got Mrs. Main’s infant, tossing it on the point of his bayonet. She stretched her arms up after it, and its blood trickled down on to her face: her cries for mercy for it ring in my ear yet. He next seized her.”

“Constance?” panted Mrs. Ordie.

“Yes. And killed her—killed her instantly. Be thankful.”

Mrs. Ordie pressed down her eyeballs, as if she would shut out some unwelcome sight. “Constance murdered,” she moaned. “And you tell me to be thankful!”

“Be ever thankful,” impressively spoke the missionary. “Others met with a worse fate.”

“Sarah Ann?” she shivered. “What became of her!”

“I am unable to tell you. I trust she escaped. At the moment of Mrs. Main’s death, I fainted on the floor where I was lying, and that must have saved my life. Had the troopers thought I possessed any still, they would not have spared me. When I recovered, not a creature—living—was to be seen. The children were lying about; they had been put out of their misery; two of the ladies, and the ensign. Poor young fellow! he had told us, in the day, that he had no parents or near friends to mourn him, so the loss of a little griff, if they did kill him, would not count for much.”

“Dead? All?”

“All. The two ladies were Mrs. Holt and Mrs. Main. Of the other ladies I saw no trace. I trust,” he added, clasping his hands fervently, “that they escaped. We shall hear of many miraculous escapes: I pray theirs may be of the number.”

“Now, Louisa, let me take you home,” urged Mrs. Beecher. “You do know the worst.”

“I must hear all,” was the answer, uttered in a tone of frenzy. “If I thought there was a word, a recital, left untold to me, I must get up in the middle of the night, and come and ask for it.”

“You have heard all,” said Mr. Beecher—“all that I know. My own escape I will not trouble you with. It was wonderful: and I lost no time in coming home overland.”

She leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. Mrs. Beecher was thinking of her random words—that she would rather lose every thing in the world than her child. But her thoughts had not grasped the dreadful possibility of losing her husband.

“When did this happen?” Mrs. Ordie suddenly asked. “What date?”

“I mentioned it,” said Mr. Beecher. “Late on the night of the 11th of May.”

She leaned forward breathless, her eyes staring. “How late? The exact hour? Speak?”

“It must have been near half past eleven. When Captain Ordie came in, we asked him the time, (for, strange to say, in our hurried hiding, not one of us put a watch about us,) and his watch said a quarter past eleven; and we were talking, after that, perhaps ten minutes. It must have been about twenty-five minutes after eleven when he was killed.”

“Listen to that!” shrieked Louisa Ordie, seizing Mrs. Beecher by the arm. “It was the very hour I saw and heard him. How was he dressed?” she rapidly asked.

“In full regimentals.”

“There! There! Do you believe me now, Mrs. Beecher? Ah! you, and all, ridiculed me; but hear it! It was my husband that came down the path here—appearing to me in the moment of his death.”

The reader must judge of this mystery according to his own opinion. It happened; at least, to the positive belief of the lady, here called Mrs. Ordie; as her friends can testify. They reason with her in vain. They point out that twenty-five minutes after eleven in Delhi would not be twenty-five minutes after eleven here: they believe that it was, and could have been, nothing but her own vivid imagination, that her thoughts were probably running on her husband through the “George” in the “Vicar of Wakefield:” and they ask—even allowing (for the argument of the moment) that such things are permitted, that the spirits of the departing may, in rare instances, appear to their relatives in a distant place, and that it was George Ordie’s which appeared to her—they ask to what end it came: what purpose was it to answer? They can see none. Neither can she; but she nevertheless believes, and will believe to the end of her life, that it was her husband’s spirit.

You will think me as crazy as poor Isaac himself, when I say that I listened with deep interest to these half mystic, half prophetic, but most earnestly delivered utterances. But we have all a crazy side to our characters (politely called a weakness), and I am bound to repeat that what I had seen in the States had vastly developed this my weakness, and had left the truth of spiritualism quite a moot point in my mind. To me there was as much reason in this man’s pretensions to hold commune with the spirits of the departed as any of the mediums with whom I had come in contact; albeit he knew little of the ways in which such powers were used. Why, then, should I not place myself in his mediumistic hands, and see if he could put me en rapport with this troubled spirit from the “vasty deep,” after the manner of some of my late American experiences? I determined to do so, and it was arranged that I should meet him the following morning, between five and six, on that part of the shore commanding the nearest view of the haunted rock.

Verily a wild-goose chase it might have appeared even to the fisher-folk of Porth Guerron, had they known our purpose when the few early movers among them saw us meet at the foot of the village, and stroll away along the lonely shore in the semi-darkness of that chill, grey, misty morning.

A perfect calm prevailed—but heavy banks of dense sea-fog hung about the headlands, now shrouding and now slightly revealing their gloomy masses. At first the Leopard stood out gaunt and huge against the grey surroundings, but as we approached it became more and more obscure. The tardy dawn just gave enough light to indicate our whereabouts, lending a most weird aspect to the scene. When we had gone about half a mile round the western arm of the bay, Isaac, who kept in advance of me, and scarcely ever spoke, suddenly stopped, and, stretching back a hand, whispered—

“Hold on, Sir—I saw her but now—take my hand and turn your eyes due west. See where she hovers with the sea-birds round the Leopard’s base!”

I gazed eagerly in the direction indicated, and faintly beheld a form, which for one moment certainly did look like that of a woman clothed in silver light, rising out of the sea, but in another, like nothing but that of a fantastic wreath of mist. It was gone as rapidly as it had appeared—as rapidly as though it had been but the flashing whiteness from the outstretched pinions of the birds that by myriads soared and swooped through the heavy folds of the fog—gone as though it had been but a passing fancy, an ocular illusion, momentary, vague, and unsubstantial as the misty air itself.

“Ye saw her, Sir, I doubt not,” then went on my guide. “Silence, patience, and faith, and ye shall see her again.”

We had reached the utmost limits of the shingly shore, where the frowning cliffs at the western horn of the cove stretched precipitously into the sea and stopped farther progress. Fifty yards beyond this barrier began the sandy causeway connecting the mainland with the Leopard. But had the tide been out even we could not have seen it from our position; and the Leopard, when the fog lifted a little, lay before us completely isolated. Nothing in nature could well have looked more weird and ghostly than did the scene, or more in harmony with our purpose. The day was breaking languidly, and still shedding but the faintest, palest light, whilst the restless fog-banks, swirling to and fro, might have been likened to giant spectres as they swept across the oily ocean, or clung to the towering cliffs in strange, fantastic forms. An intense chill was in the air, which was greatly increased when, every now and then, the grey mist enveloped us in its ghostly folds, shutting out everything beyond an arm’s length, and seeming to cut us off from the world of fact and light.

During one of the densest of these visitations, I felt the rough, broad palm of Isaac close tightly on mine; and through a gap which suddenly appeared in the obscurity surrounding us I once more saw the female form in strong relief against the dark crags of the Leopard. Now there was no mistake about it. Bathed in the same translucent light, there it plainly was, floating in mid-air, as one has seen angels represented in pictures, and slowly waving one arm, half-beckoning and pointing upwards. Say it was some three hundred yards distant across the water—say that it was still vague and vapour-like, semi-transparent in parts, as the fog itself—say that I was out of my mind, or in a dream, or unduly acted on by those Transatlantic experiences and the imaginings arising therefrom, which old Isaac had rekindled: say all this, if you please; but I say distinctly that with these eyes I saw a woman’s form, palpable, unmistakable, floating upwards across the face of the cliff, pointing and beckoning. The features at such a distance, of course, could not be discerned—nor do I say that I could see any details. All was merged into the unsubstantial substance—if I may use the paradox—of silvery light; but the form and action were distinct. For two minutes or more, it may have been, the vision was so far clearly before me; nor did it dissolve into the mist, of which, I admit, it seemed composed, until the figure reached, in its slow ascent, the topmost verge of the isolated crag. Then the fog again shut it all out, and for a while held us in its weird gloom. But soon after this it lifted, a soft breeze sprang up, and the cheering rays of the morning sun restored us to warmth and reality.

Beyond a momentary look of triumph which shot from old Isaac’s lack-lustre eyes as he turned them on me, little or nothing passed between us as we retraced our steps, and I had full time to cogitate over this strange experience. At length I said, as we got back among the boats,

“How long is it since the Leopard was explored?” Isaac shook his head, as he answered,

“It never was explored; no one can land there—no one ever goes nearer to it than we have been. If they did, the iron net which the evil spirit of the place stretches across the channel, and which cost Raymond his life, and made my wits to wander, would wind itself round and strangle the life out of those who should dare to brave the dangers of the crag.”

“But I am told,” said I, “one could manage to land there, when the sand is exposed, at very low tide.”

“Aye, but you would not bide there long—the net would be shot over you as surely as fate.”

“There are spring tides now, I think,” I went on; “when will the sand be clearest?”

“At this evening’s ebb; it was nearly clear this morning when we were first there. This evening the tide will run out farther, and be dead low water somewhere nigh to five o’clock.”

“Then,” said I, decidedly, “if the sea holds smooth I’ll land there myself, and have a closer look at the place where this troubled spirit wanders.”

This determination was the result of my cogitation, for, notwithstanding what I had seen, I had no dread of, nor belief in the existence of this direful net—that part of the story was, doubtless, founded on some antique myth, as old as the crag itself. If I understood spiritual manifestations aright, they always pointed to a purpose, and it is nothing but man’s own wilful blindness and scepticism which hides from him their end and aim, and leads him in his arrogance to ask, “What is their use; what good ever comes from these departed souls ‘revisiting the glimpses of the moon,’ and by sights, signs, or sounds, holding converse with us of the visible world?”

Isaac’s face was something to see as I announced my resolve, and, in spite of all persuasion and argument, he entirely refused to accompany me on the expedition. He declared his conviction that I should never return alive, and that I should find no one in Porth Guerron who would go with me, adding—

“I doubt whether they’ll even lend ye a boat, if they know your bent.”

I was so fully determined, however, that by an hour before low water that evening I had hired the lightest row-boat in the place, and, keeping my object to myself, was afloat in the bay under pretext of simple amusement. Old Isaac reluctantly promised to say nothing of my intention, and, though doing all he could to dissuade me, helped me to push the boat off from the beach. As I pulled out, I saw his tall, gaunt figure passing along the shore towards the point we had occupied in the morning.

It was a lovely, soft, windless, autumn evening, as the sun sank, towards the west, and, keeping my eye upon the tide, I had lazily pulled to within twenty boats’ length of the sandy ridge when the thin line of rippling breakers marking its position faded away and left it bare. Then I gave way lustily, and in a few minutes the boat’s nose ran softly up on to the sand just below the spur of the fatal crag. Springing ashore, I made her fast by the grapnel I had ready in her bows. An athlete, and a fairish cragsman, I soon managed to scale the lower declivities, and before long I had clambered well-nigh to the top of the Leopard’s Head. I will not stop to describe the wild beauty of the scene stretching around me, nor do more than hint at the strange undercurrent of feeling which had prompted me to make this exploration; but a conviction had taken root in my mind that I might by it gain some clue to the purpose of the manifestation I had witnessed—a conviction, as I have said, that there had been an object in it, and that I might trace this object out. Thus I began examining and surveying every rift and fissure, cleft, and ledge of this wild storm-beaten islet; this hitherto undisputed home of the sea-birds, which, astounded by my audacity, at first seemed so reluctant to move that I might almost have captured many with my hands. But at length the whole colony was on the wing—swirling, swooping, hovering, until the air was darkened with them as by a cloud, and their shrill, piping, and discordant notes nearly deafened me.

Half an hour passed, and by the time I had wandered wherever foothold was possible, all over and around the top of the plateau, twilight was setting in. I was descending by the way I had come, and had got a short distance down, when, upon a rocky shelf just below a strangely beetling crag, my eye fell upon an object which startled me, and instantly riveted my attention. Getting close to the edge of the overhanging rock the better to look down upon this discovery, I all but lost my footing through the shock which the spectacle then gave me, for there, partially coiled under shelter of the projecting cliff, lay a human skeleton, bleached and mouldering, with the face of the skull turned upwards to the sky—the hollow sockets of the eyes seeming to meet mine with a horrible, imploring expression. When the amazement caused by this ghastly sight a little subsided, I began to realise the fact that in it perhaps lay the very clue I was looking for! How had the unhappy being whose remains lay thus exposed before me come there? Instantly I thought of Raymond Sass, and the account Jacob Sellar had given me of either he or his companion being seen clinging to the rocks when their boat foundered in the Leo­pard’s Grip, just thirty years ago this very night! If these bleaching bones were indeed those of the hapless fisherman, and it seemed the likely solution, had I not discovered the purpose for which the restless spirit of Alice Dournelle had ever since haunted this wild and supposedly inaccessible rock?

Well! not to prolong my tale, I got back to my boat, and as soon as it touched the shore of the cove, without waiting to answer the questions with which I was assailed, I hastened straight away to the vicarage, and communicated my discovery to the incumbent of the square-towered, tiny church at the head of the village. He was a pompous, unsociable man, whom I had rather avoided, and, although at first he seemed to entirely discredit my statement—for, unwisely, I told him how I had been led to visit the Leopard—I convinced him of its truth.

In the end, he took such steps as led to the interment in the churchyard, by the grave of Alice Dournelle, of the remains of poor Raymond Sass. That they were his there could be no doubt, inasmuch as, lying with them besides the remains of some other slowly perishable trifles, such as a tobacco-box, knife, &c., there was found a little trinket in the shape of a heart. On it was engraved his name, and that of Alice, the donor, and he had evidently worn it round his neck by the little chain to which it was attached.

One word more about Isaac Sellar and my fisher friends. Although I had, for a few of them, dispelled the fable of the iron net and had shown that access to the rock was easy, and without danger, he entirely refused to make one of the small party who were at length persuaded to accompany me on a second visit, to assist in the removal of all that was left of their lost comrade.

And as to the phantom? Well; it has never appeared again. Even Isaac Sellar, whom I had a talk with only last autumn, has never seen it, though three years have passed since I cleared up the mystery by restoring to rest and peace the erewhile troubled spirit of Alice Dournelle—for that I did this by procuring for her lover Christian burial I have no manner of doubt.

My experiences at Porth Guerron have finally determined my wavering belief in the truth of spiritual manifestations. I can no longer doubt that they have their object, and that they have a real existence for those whose minds are rightly attuned, and who can, as Isaac put it, have “faith in something just beyond what ye can touch and lay hold of.”

“There is one thing you have not told me of,” I said, “and that you must possess. I cannot believe that your family has been settled here so long without having a ghost.”

She had turned round to look at me, to know what it was that had been omitted in her descriptions. When she heard what it was she smiled a little, but not with the pleasant mockery I had expected. On the contrary, it was a sort of gentle smile of recognition that something had been left out.

“We don’t call it a ghost,” she said. “I have wondered if you had never noticed. I am fond of it for my part; but then I have been used to it all my life. And here we are, then,” she added as we reached the top of a little ascent and came out upon a raised avenue, which I had known by its name of the Lady’s Walk without as yet getting any explanation what that meant. It must have been, I supposed, the avenue to the old house, and now encircled one portion of the grounds without any distinct meaning. On the side nearest the gardens and house it was but slightly raised above the shrubberies, but on the other side was the summit of a high bank sloping steeply to the river, which, after it escaped from the loch, made a wide bend round that portion of the grounds. A row of really grand beeches rose on each side of the path, and through the openings in the trees the house, the bright gardens, the silvery gleam of the loch were visible. The evening sun was slanting into our eyes as we walked along; a little soft yet brisk air was pattering among the leaves, and here and there a yellow cluster in the middle of a branch showing the first touch of a cheerful decay. “Here we are, then.” It was a curious phrase; but there are some odd idioms in the Scotch—I mean Scots’—form of our common language, and I had become accustomed now to accept them without remark.

“I suppose,” I said, “there must be some back way to the village or to the farm house under this bank, though there seems no room for a path?”

“Why do you ask?” she said, looking at me with a smile.

“Because I always hear some one passing along—I imagine down there. The steps are very distinct. Don’t you hear them now? It has puzzled me a good deal, for I cannot make out where the path can be.”

She smiled again, with a meaning in her smile, and looked at me steadily, listening, as I was. And then, after a pause, she said, “That is what you were asking for. If we did not hear it, it would make us unhappy. Did you not know why this was called the Lady’s Walk?’

When she said these words I was conscious of an odd enough change in my sensations—nay, I should say in my very sense of hearing, which was the one appealed to. I had heard the sound often, and, after looking back at first to see who it was and seeing no one, had made up my mind that the steps were on some unseen bye-way and heard them accordingly, feeling quite sure that the sound came from below. Now my hearing changed, and I could not understand how I had ever thought anything else: the steps were on a level with us, by our side—as if some third person were accompanying us along the avenue. I am no believer in ghosts, nor the least superstitious, so far as I had ever been aware (more than everybody is), but I felt myself get out of the way with some celerity and a certain thrill of curious sensation. The idea of rubbing shoulders with something unseen startled me in spite of myself.

“Ah!” said Charlotte, “it gives you an—unpleasant feeling. I forgot you are not used to it like me.”

“I am tolerably well used to it, for I have heard it often,” I said, somewhat ashamed of my involuntary movement. Then I laughed, which I felt to be altogether out of place and fictitious, and said, “No doubt there is some very easy explanation of it—some vibration or echo. The science of acoustics clears up many mysteries.”

“There is no explanation,” Chatty said, almost angrily. “She has walked here far longer than anyone can remember. It is an ill sign for us Campbells when she goes away. She was the eldest daughter, like me; and I think she has got to be our guardian angel. There is no harm going to happen as long as she is here. Listen to her,” she cried, standing still with her hand raised. The low sun shone full on her, catching her brown hair, the lucid clearness of her brown eyes, her cheeks so clear and soft, in colour a little summer-brown, too. I stood and listened with a something of excited feeling which I could not control: the sound of this third person, whose steps were not to be mistaken though she was unseen, made my heart beat: if, indeed, it was not merely the presence of my companion, who was sweet enough to account for any man’s emotion.

“You are startled,” she said with a smile.

“Well! I should not be acting my part, should I, as I ought, if I did not feel the proper thrill? It must be disrespectful to a ghost not to be afraid.”

“Don’t say a ghost,” said Chatty; “I think that is disrespectful. It is the Lady of Ellermore; everybody knows about her. And do you know,” she added, “when my mother died—the greatest grief I have ever known—the steps ceased? Oh! it is true! You need not look me in the face as if there was anything to laugh at. It is ten years ago, and I was only a silly sort of girl, not much good to anyone. They sent me out to get the air when she was lying in a doze; and I came here. I was crying, as you may suppose, and at first I did not pay any attention. Then it struck me all at once—the Lady was away. They told me afterwards that was the worst sign. It is always death that is coming when she goes away.”

The pathos of this incident confused all my attempts to touch it with levity, and we went on for a little without speaking, during which time it is almost unnecessary to say that I was listening with all my might to those strange footsteps, which finally I persuaded myself were no more than echoes of our own.

“It is very curious,” I said politely. “Of course you were greatly agitated and too much absorbed in real grief to have any time to think of the other: and there might be something in the state of the atmosphere——”

She gave me an indignant look. We were nearly at the end of the walk; and at that moment I could have sworn that the footsteps, which had got a little in advance, here turned and met us going back. I am aware that nothing could sound more foolish, and that it must have been some vibration or atmospheric phenomenon. But yet this was how it seemed—not an optical but an aural delusion. So long as the steps were going with us it was less impossible to account for it; but when they turned and audibly came back to meet us! Not all my scepticism could prevent me from stepping aside to let them pass. This time they came directly between us, and the naturalness of my withdrawal out of the way was more significant than the faltering laugh with which I excused myself. “It is a very curious sound indeed,” I said with a tremor which slightly affected my voice.

Chatty gave me a reassuring smile. She did not laugh at me, which was consolatory. She stood for a moment as if looking after the visionary passenger. “We are not afraid,” she said, “even the youngest; we all know she is our friend.”

When we had got back to the side of the loch, where, I confess, I was pleased to find myself, in the free open air without any perplexing shadow of trees, I felt less objection to the subject. “I wish you would tell me the story; for of course there is a story,” I said.

“No, there is no story—at least nothing tragical or even romantic. They say she was the eldest daughter. I sometimes wonder,” Chatty said with a smile and a faint increase of colour, “whether she might not be a little like me. She lived here all her life, and had several generations to take care of. Oh no, there was no murder or wrong about our Lady; she just loved Ellermore above everything; but my idea is that she has been allowed the care of us ever since.”

“That is very sweet, to have the care of you,” I said, scarcely venturing to put any emphasis on the pronoun; “but, after all, it must be slow work, don’t you think, walking up and down there for ever? I call that a poor sort of reward for a good woman. If she had been a bad one it might have answered very well for a punishment.”

“Mr. Temple!” Chatty said, now reddening with indignation, “do you think it is a poor thing to have the care of your own people, to watch over them, whatever may happen—to be all for them and their service? I don’t think so; I should like to have such a fate.”

Perhaps I had spoken thus on purpose to bring about the discussion. “There is such a thing as being too devoted to your family. Are they ever grateful? They go away and marry and leave you in the lurch.”

She looked up at me with a little astonishment. “The members may vary, but the family never goes away,” she said; “besides, that can apply to us in our present situation only. She must have seen so many come and go; but that need not vex her, you know, because they go where she is.”

“My dear Miss Campbell, wait a bit, think a little,” I said: “where she is! That is in the Lady’s Walk, according to your story. Let us hope that all your ancestors and relations are not there.”

“I suppose you want to make me angry,” said Chatty. “She is in heaven—have you any doubt of that?—but every day when the sun is setting she comes back home.”

“Oh, come!” I said, “if it is only at the sunset that is not so bad.”

Miss Campbell looked at me doubtfully, as if not knowing whether to be angry. “You want to make fun of it,” she said, “to laugh at it; and yet,” she added with a little spirit, “you were rather nervous half an hour ago.”

“I acknowledge to being nervous. I am very impressionable. I believe that is the word. It is a luxury to be nervous at the fit moment. Frightened you might say, if you prefer plain speaking. And I am very glad it is at sunset, not in the dark. This completes the round of my Highland experiences,” I said; “everything now is perfect. I have shot grouse on the hill and caught trout on the loch, and been soaked to the skin and then dried in the wind; I wanted nothing but the family ghost. And now I have seen her, or at least heard her——”

“If you are resolved to make a joke of it I cannot help it,” said Chatty, “but I warn you that it is not agreeable to me, Mr. Temple. Let us talk of something else. In the Highlands,” she said with dignity, “we take different views of many things.”

“There are some things,” I said, “of which but one view is possible—that I should have the audacity and impertinence to laugh at anything for which you have a veneration! I believe it is only because I was so frightened——”

She smiled again in her lovely motherly way, a smile of indulgence and forgiveness and bounty. “You are too humble now,” she said, “and I think I hear some one calling me. It is time to go in.”

And to be sure there was some one calling her: there always was, I think, at all hours of the night and day.

CHAPTER II

To say that I got rid of the recollection of the Lady of Ellermore when I went upstairs after a cheerful evening through a long and slippery gallery to my room in the wing would be untrue. The curious experience I had just had dwelt in my mind with a feeling of not unpleasant perplexity. Of course, I said to myself, there must be something to account for those footsteps—some hidden way in which the sounds could come. Perhaps my first idea would turn out to be correct—that there was a bye-road to the farm, or to the stables, which in some states of the atmosphere—or perhaps it might even be always—echoed back the sounds of passing feet in some subterranean vibration. One has heard of such things; one has heard, indeed, of every kind of natural wonder, some of them no more easy to explain than the other kind of prodigy; but so long as you have science with you, whether you understand it or not, you are all right. I could not help wondering, however, whether, if by chance I heard those steps in the long gallery outside my door, I should refer the matter comfortably to the science of acoustics. I was tormented, until I fell asleep, by a vague expectation of hearing them. I could not get them out of my mind or out of my ears, so distinct were they—the light step, soft but with energy in it, evidently a woman’s step. I could not help recollecting, with a tingling sensation through all my veins, the distinctness of the turn it gave—the coming back, the steps going in a line opposite to ours. It seemed to me that from moment to moment I must hear it again in the gallery, and then how could it be explained?

Next day—for I slept very well after I had succeeded in getting to sleep, and what I had heard did not by any means haunt my dreams—next day I managed to elude all the pleasant occupations of the house, and, as soon as I could get free from observation, I took my way to the Lady’s Walk. I had said that I had letters to write—a well-worn phrase, which of course means exactly what one pleases. I walked up and down the Lady’s Walk, and could neither hear nor see anything. On this side of the shrubbery there was no possibility of any concealed path; on the other side the bank went sloping to the water’s edge. The avenue ran along from the corner of the loch half-way round the green plateau on which the house was planted, and at the upper end came out upon the elevated ground behind the house; but no road crossed it, nor was there the slightest appearance of any mode by which a steady sound not its own could be communicated here. I examined it all with the utmost care, looking behind the bole of every tree as if the secret might be there, and my heart gave a leap when I perceived what seemed to me one narrow track worn along the ground. Fancy plays us curious pranks even when she is most on her guard. It was a strange idea that I, who had come here with the purpose of finding a way of explaining the curious phenomenon upon which so long and lasting a superstition had been built, should be so quickly infected by it. I saw the little track, quite narrow but very distinct, and though of course I did not believe in the Lady of Ellermore, yet within myself I jumped at the certainty that this was her track. It gave me a curious sensation. The certainty lay underneath the scepticism as if they were two things which had no connection with each other. Had anyone seen me it must have been supposed that I was looking for something among the bushes, so closely did I scrutinise every foot of the soil and every tree.

It exercised a fascination upon me which I could not resist. The Psychical Society did not exist in those days, so far as I know, but there are many minds outside that inquisitive body to whom the authentication of a ghost story, or, to speak more practically, the clearing up of a superstition, is very attractive. I managed to elude the family arrangements once more at the same hour at which Miss Campbell and I had visited the Lady’s Walk on the previous evening. It was a lovely evening, soft and warm, the western sky all ablaze with colour, the great branches of the beeches thrown out in dark maturity of greenness upon the flush of orange and crimson melting into celestial rosy red as it rose higher, and flinging itself in airy masses rose-tinted across the serene blue above. The same wonderful colours glowed in reflection out of the loch. The air was of magical clearness, and earth and sky seemed stilled with an almost awe of their own loveliness, happiness, and peace.

The holy time was quiet as a nun,

Breathless with adoration.

“I am very glad they have left me if I may have a little talk with you,” I said; and then before I knew I had told her. She was the kind of woman to whom it is a relief to tell whatever may be on your heart. The fact that my commission was to her, had really less force with me in telling it, than the ease to myself. She, however, was very much surprised and disturbed. “Colin in trouble? Oh, that might very well be,” she said, then stopped herself. “You are his friend,” she said; “you will not misunderstand me, Mr. Temple. He is very independent, and not so open as the rest of us. That is nothing against him. We are all rather given to talking; we keep nothing to ourselves—except Colin. And then he is more away than the rest.” The first necessity in her mind seemed to be this, of defending the absent. Then came the question, From whom could the warning be? Charley came in at this moment, and she called him to her eagerly. “Here is a very strange thing happened. Somebody came up to Mr. Temple in the shrubbery and told him to tell us that Colin was in trouble.”

“Colin!” I could see that Charley was, as Charlotte had been, more distressed than surprised. “When did you hear from him last?” he said.

“On Monday; but the strange thing is, who could it be that sent such a message? You said a lady, Mr. Temple?”

“What like was she?” said Charley.

Then I described as well as I could. “She was tall and very slight; wrapped up in a cloak, so that I could not make out much, and her veil down. And it was almost dark.”

“It is clear she did not want to be recognised,” Charley said.

“There was something peculiar about her voice, but I really cannot describe it, a strange tone unlike anything——”

“Marion Gray has a peculiar voice; she is tall and slight. But what could she know about Colin?”

“I will tell you who is more likely,” cried Charley, “and that is Susie Cameron. Her brother is in London now; they may have heard from him.”

“Oh! Heaven forbid! oh! Heaven forbid! the Camerons of all people!” Charlotte cried, wringing her hands. The action struck me as so like that of the veiled stranger that it gave me a curious shock. I had not time to follow out the vague, strange suggestion that it seemed to breathe into my mind, but the sensation was as if I had suddenly, groping, come upon some one in the dark.

“Whoever it was,” I said, “she was not indifferent, but full of concern and interest——”

“Susie would be that,” Charley said, looking significantly at his sister, who rose from her chair in great distress.

“I would telegraph to him at once,” she said, “but it is too late to-night.”

“And what good would it do to telegraph? If he is in trouble it would be no help to him.”

“But what can I do? what else can I do?” she cried. I had plunged them into sudden misery, and could only look on now as an anxious but helpless spectator, feeling at the same time as if I had intruded myself upon a family affliction: for it was evident that they were not at all unprepared for “trouble” to Colin. I felt my position very embarrassing, and rose to go away.

“I feel miserably guilty,” I said, “as if I had been the bearer of bad news; but I am sure you will believe that I would not for anything in the world intrude upon——”

Charlotte paused to give me a pale sort of smile, and pointed to the chair I had left. “No, no,” she said, “don’t go away, Mr. Temple. We do not conceal from you that we are anxious—that we were anxious even before—but don’t go away. I don’t think I will tell my father, Charley. It would break his rest. Let him have his night’s rest whatever happens; and there is nothing to be done to-night——”

“We will see what the post brings to-morrow,” Charley said.

And then the consultation ended abruptly by the sudden entrance of the boys, bringing a gust of fresh night air with them. The horses were not a preen the worse though they had been out all day; even old grumbling Geordie, the coachman, had not a word to say. “You may have them again to-morrow, Chatty, if you like,” said Tom. She had sat down to her work, and met their eyes with an unruffled countenance. “I hope I am not so unreasonable,” she said with her tranquil looks; only I could see a little tremor in her hand as she stooped over the socks she was knitting. She laid down her work after a while, and went to the piano and played accompaniments, while first Jack and then Tom sang. She did it without any appearance of effort, yielding to all the wishes of the youngsters, while I looked on wondering, How can women do this sort of thing? It is more than one can divine.

Next morning Mr. Campbell asked “by the bye,” but with a pucker in his forehead, which, being now enlightened on the subject, I could understand, if there was any letter from Colin? “No,” Charlotte said (who for her part had turned over all her letters with a swift, anxious scrutiny). “But that is nothing,” she said, “for we heard on Monday.” The old gentleman uttered an “Umph!” of displeasure. “Tell him I think it a great want in manners that he is not here to receive Mr. Temple.” “Oh, father, Mr. Temple understands,” cried Charlotte; and she turned upon me those mild eyes, in which there was now a look that went to my heart, an appeal at once to my sympathy and my forbearance, bidding me not to ask, not to speak, yet to feel with her all the same. If she could have known the rush of answering feeling with which my heart replied! but I had to be careful not even to look too much knowledge, too much sympathy.

After this two days passed without any incident. What letters were sent, or other communications, to Colin I could not tell. They were great people for the telegraph and flashed messages about continually. There was a telegraph station in the little village, which had been very surprising to me at first, but I no longer wondered, seeing their perpetual use of it. People who have to do with business, with great “works” to manage, get into the way more easily than we others. But either no answer or nothing of a satisfactory character was obtained, for I was told no more. The second evening was Sunday, and I was returning alone from a ramble down the glen. It was Mr. Campbell’s custom to read a sermon on Sunday evenings to his household, and as I had, in conformity to the custom of the family, already heard two, I had deserted on this occasion, and chosen the freedom and quiet of a rural walk instead. It was a cloudy evening, and there had been rain. The clouds hung low on the hills, and half the surrounding peaks had retired altogether into the mist. I had scarcely set foot within the gates when I met once more the lady whose message had brought so much pain. The trees arched over the approach at this spot, and even in full daylight it was in deep shade. Now in the evening dimness it was dark as night. I could see little more than the slim straight figure, the sudden perception of which gave me—I could scarcely tell why—a curious thrill of something like fear. She came hurriedly towards me, an outline, nothing more, until the same peculiar voice, sweet but shrill, broke the silence. “Did you tell them?” she said.

It cost me an effort to reply calmly. My heart had begun to beat with an excitement over which I had no control, like a horse that takes fright at something which its rider cannot see. I said, “Yes, I told them,” straining my eyes, yet feeling as if my faculties were restive like that same horse and would not obey me, would not look or examine her appearance as I desired. But indeed it would have been in vain, for it was too dark to see.

“But nothing has been done,” she said. “Did they think I would come for nothing?” And there was again that movement, the same as I had seen in Charlotte, of wringing her hands.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but if you will tell me who you are? I am a stranger here; no doubt if you would see Miss Campbell herself, or if she knew who it was——”

I felt the words somehow arrested in my throat, I could not tell why; and she drew back from me with a sudden movement. It is hard to characterise a gesture in the dark, but there seemed to be a motion of impatience and despair in it. “Tell them again Colin wants them. He is in sore trouble, trouble that is nigh death.”

“I will carry your message; but for God’s sake if it is so important tell me who sends it,” I said.

She shook her head and went rapidly past me, notwithstanding the anxious appeals that I tried to make. She seemed to put out a hand to wave me back as I stood gazing after her. Just then the lodge door opened. I suppose the woman within had been disturbed by the sound of the voices, and a gleam of fire-light burst out upon the road. Across this gleam I saw the slight figure pass quickly, and then a capacious form with a white apron came out and stood in the door. The sight of the coachman’s wife in her large and comfortable proportions gave me a certain ease, I cannot tell why. I hurried up to her. “Who was that that passed just now?” I asked.

“That passed just now? There was naebody passed. I thought I heard a voice, and that it was maybe Geordie; but nobody has passed here that I could see.”

“Nonsense! you must have seen her,” I cried hastily; “she cannot be out of sight yet. No doubt you would know who she was—a lady tall and slight—in a cloak——”

“Eh, sir, ye maun be joking,” cried the woman. “What lady, if it werna Miss Charlotte, would be walking here at this time of the night? Lady! it might be, maybe, the schoolmaster’s daughter. She has one of those ulsters like her betters. But nobody has passed here this hour back; o’ that I’m confident,” she said.

“Why did you come out, then, just at this moment?” I cried. The woman contemplated me in the gleam from the fire from top to toe. “You’re the English gentleman that’s biding up at the house?” she said. “ ’Deed, I just heard a step, that was nae doubt your step, and I thought it might be my man; but there has naebody, far less a lady, whatever she had on, passed my door coming or going. Is that you, Geordie?” she cried suddenly as a step became audible approaching the gate from the outer side.

“Ay, it’s just me,” responded her husband out of the gloom.

“Have ye met a lady as ye came along? The gentleman here will have it that there’s been a lady passing the gate, and there’s been no lady. I would have seen her through the window even if I hadna opened the door.”

“I’ve seen no lady,” said Geordie, letting himself in with considerable noise at the foot entrance, which I now remembered to have closed behind me when I passed through it a few minutes before. “I’ve met no person; it’s no an hour for ladies to be about the roads on Sabbath day at e’en.”

It was not till this moment that a strange fancy, which I will explain hereafter, darted into my mind. How it came I cannot tell. I was not the sort of man, I said to myself, for any such folly. My imagination had been a little touched, to be sure, by that curious affair of the footsteps; but this, which seemed to make my heart stand still and sent a shiver through me, was very different, and it was a folly not to be entertained for a moment. I stamped my foot upon it instantly, crushing it on the threshold of the mind. “Apparently either you or I must be mistaken,” I said with a laugh at the high tone of Geordie, who himself had evidently been employed in a jovial way—quite consistent, according to all I had heard, with very fine principles in respect to the Sabbath. I had a laugh over this as I went away, insisting upon the joke to myself as I hurried up the avenue. It was extremely funny, I said to myself; it would be a capital story among my other Scotch experiences. But somehow my laugh died away in a very feeble sort of quaver. The night had grown dark even when I emerged from under the trees, by reason of a great cloud, full of rain, which had rolled up over the sky, quenching it out. I was very glad to see the lights of the house gleaming steadily before me. The blind had not been drawn over the end window of the drawing-room, and from the darkness without I looked in upon a scene which was full of warmth and household calm. Though it was August there was a little glimmer of fire. The reading of the sermon was over. Old Mr. Campbell still sat at a little table with the book before him, but it was closed. Charlotte in the foreground, with little Harry and Mary on either side of her, was “hearing their Paraphrase.”14 The boys were putting a clever dog through his tricks in a sort of clandestine way behind backs, at whom Charlotte would shake a finger now and then with an admonitory smiling look. Charley was reading or writing at the end of the room. The soft little chime of the children’s voices, the suppressed laughter and whispering of the boys, the father’s leisurely remark now and then, made up a soft murmur of sound which was like the very breath of quietude and peace. How did I dare, their favoured guest, indebted so deeply as I was to their kindness, to go in among them with that mysterious message and disturb their tranquillity once more?

When I went into the drawing-room, which was not till an hour later, Charlotte looked up at me smiling with some playful remark as to my flight from the evening reading. But as she caught my eye her countenance changed. She put down her book, and after a little consideration walked to that end window through which I had looked, and which was in a deep recess, making me a little sign to follow her. “How dark the night is,” she said with a little pretence of looking out; and then in a hurried under-tone, “Mr. Temple, you have heard something more?”

“Not anything more, but certainly the same thing repeated. I have seen the lady again.”

“And who is she? Tell me frankly, Mr. Temple. Just the same thing—that Colin is in trouble? no details? I cannot imagine who can take so much interest. But you asked her for her name?”

“I asked her, but she gave me no reply. She waved her hand and went on. I begged her to see you, and not to give me such a commission; but it was of no use. I don’t know if I ought to trouble you with a vague warning that only seems intended to give pain.”

“Oh yes,” she cried, “oh yes, it was right to tell me. If I only knew who it was! Perhaps you can describe her better, since you have seen her a second time. But Colin has friends—whom we don’t know. Oh, Mr. Temple, it is making a great claim upon your kindness, but could not you have followed her and found out who she was?”

“I might have done that,” I said. “To tell the truth, it was so instantaneous and I was—startled.”

She looked up at me quickly with a questioning air, and grew a little pale, gazing at me; but whether she comprehended the strange wild fancy which I could not even permit myself to realise I cannot tell; for Charley seeing us standing together, and being in a state of nervous anxiety also, here came and joined us, and we stood talking together in an under tone till Mr. Campbell called to know if anything was the matter. “You are laying your heads together like a set of conspirators,” said the old gentleman with a half-laugh. His manner to me was always benign and gracious; but now that I knew something of the family troubles I could perceive a vein of suppressed irritation, a certain watchfulness which made him alarming to the other members of the household. Charlotte gave us both a warning look. “I will tell him to-morrow—I will delay no longer—but not to-night,” she said. “Mr. Temple was telling us about his ramble, father. He has just come in in time to avoid the rain.”

“Well,” said the old man, “he cannot expect to be free from rain up here in the Highlands. It is wonderful the weather we have had.” And with this the conversation fell into an easy domestic channel. Miss Campbell this time could not put away the look of excitement and agitation in her eyes. But she escaped with the children to see them put to bed, and we sat and talked of politics and other mundane subjects. The boys were all going to leave Ellermore next day—Tom and Jack for the “works,” Charley upon some other business. Mr. Campbell made me formal apologies for them. “I had hoped Colin would have been at home by this time to do the honours of the Highlands: but we expect him daily,” he said. He kept his eye fixed upon me as if to give emphasis to his words and defy any doubt that might arise in my mind.

Next morning I was summoned by Charley before I came downstairs to “come quickly and speak to my father.” I found him in the library, which opened from the dining-room. He was walking about the room in great agitation. He began to address me almost before I was in sight. “Who is this, sir, that you have been having meetings with about Colin? some insidious gossip or other that has taken ye in. I need not tell you, Mr. Temple, a lawyer and an Englishman, that an anonymous statement——” For once the old gentleman had forgotten himself, his respect for his guest, his fine manners. He was irritated, obstinate, wounded in pride and feeling. Charlotte touched him on the arm with a murmured appeal, and turned her eyes to me in anxious deprecation. But there was no thought further from my mind than that of taking offence.

“I fully feel it,” I said; “nor was it my part to bring any dis­agreeable suggestion into this house—if it had not been that my own mind was so burdened with it and Miss Campbell so clearsighted.”

He cast a look at her, half affectionate, half displeased, and then he said to me testily, “But who was the woman? That is the question; that is what I want to know.”

My eyes met Charlotte’s as I looked up. She had grown very pale, and was gazing at me eagerly, as if she had divined somehow the wild fancy which once more shot across my mind against all reason and without any volition of mine.

“Charlotte!” I cried, drawing her arm more closely through mine. She cast me a glance, a smile, like one who could not even in the midst of the highest thoughts neglect or be unkind, but drew her hand away and clasped it in the other. “We are of one stock,” she said, the tears always falling; “and the same heart. We are too anxious, but God is above us all. Go back to your pleasant place, and say to my mother that I will never leave them. Go away, my bonnie lady, go away! You and me, we must learn to trust them to God.”

We waited, and I think she almost expected some reply. But there was none. I took her arm within mine again, and led her away trembling. The moment, the excitement had been too much for me also. I said, “You tell her to go, that she is too anxious, that she must trust you to God—and in the same breath you pledge yourself never to leave them. Do you think if God does not want her, He wants you to stand between Him and them?” I grasped her arm so closely and held it so to my side in my passion that I think I almost hurt her. She gave me a startled look, and put up her hand to dry her wet eyes.

“It is very different,” she said; “I am living and can work for them. It has come to me all in a moment to see that She is just like me after all. Perhaps to die does not make a woman wise any more than life does. And it may be that nobody has had the thought to tell her. She will have imagined that she could stop any harm that was coming, being here; but if it was not God’s pleasure to stop it, how could she? You know she tried,” said Charlotte, looking at me wistfully; “she tried—God bless her for that! Oh, you know how anxious she was; but neither she nor I could do it—neither she nor I!”

At this moment we were interrupted by some one flying towards us from the house, calling, “Miss Charlotte, Miss Charlotte! you are wanted,” in a wild and agitated tone. It was the woman who had been left in charge of Mr. Campbell, and Charlotte started at the sight of her. She drew her hand from my arm, and flew along the path. “Oh, Marg’ret, why did you leave him?” she said.

“It was no blame of mine,” said the woman, turning, following her mistress. I hurried on, too, after them, and the explanation was addressed to both of us. “He would come down to the library: nothing would stop him. I tried all I could; but what could I do? And there is nothing to be frighted for, Miss Charlotte. Ah! I’ve nae breath to tell it. He is just real like himself!”

Charlotte flew along the path like a creature flying for life. She paused an instant at the door of the house to beckon me to follow her. The library, the room where her father had gone, was one of those which had been partially dismantled. The pictures had been taken down from the walls, a number of books which she meant to take with her collected on the tables. Mr. Campbell had displaced some of the books in order to seat himself in his favourite seat. He looked at her curiously, almost with severity, as she came in anxious and breathless. He was greatly changed. He had been robust and hale, like a tower, when I first entered Ellermore, not yet six months since. Now he had shrunken away into half his size. The coat which he had not worn for months hung loosely upon him; his white hair was long, and he wore a beard which changed his appearance greatly. All this change had come since the time I parted with him in London, when he told me he was going to join his son Colin; but there was another change more remarkable, which I with awe, and Charlotte with terror, recognised at a glance—the prostration of his mind was gone. He looked his daughter in the face with intelligent, almost sternly intelligent eyes.

“Oh, father, you have wanted me!” Charlotte cried. “I went out for a mouthful of air—I went out—for a few minutes——”

“Why should you not have gone out, Chatty?” he said. “And why was Marg’ret left in charge of me? I have been ill, I make no doubt; but why should I be watched and spied about my own house?”

She gave me a glance of dismay, and then she faltered, “Oh, not that, father—not that!”

“But I tell you it was that. She would have hindered my coming downstairs, that woman”—he gave a little laugh, which was terrible to us in the state of our feelings—“and here are you rushing in out of breath, as if there was some cause of fear. Who is that behind ye? Is it one of your brothers—or——”

“It is Mr. Temple, father,” she said, with a new alarm.

“Mr. Temple,” he said, with a shade of displeasure passing over his face. Then he recovered himself, and his old-world politeness. “I am glad to see ye,” he said. “So far as I can remember, the house was much disorganised when you were here before, Mr. Temple. You will think we are always out of order; but I’ve been ill, and everything has fallen out of gear. This is not a place,” he added, turning to Charlotte, “to receive a stranger in. What is all this for?” he added, in a sharp tone, waving his hand towards the books, of which some were heaped at his feet on the floor.

Once more she made a pause of dismay. “They are some books to take with us,” she said; “you remember, father, we are going away.”

“Going away!” he cried, irritably. “Where are my letters? Where are your brothers? What are you doing with a gentleman visitor (I beg ye a thousand pardons, Mr. Temple!) and the place in such a state? It is my opinion that there is something wrong. Where are my letters? It is not in reason that there should be no letters. After being laid aside from business for a time, to have your letters kept back from you, you will allow, Mr. Temple,” he said, turning to me with an explanatory air, “is irritating. It is perhaps done with a mistaken notion that I am not equal to them; but if you think I will allow myself to be treated as a child——”

He stammered a little now and then, in his anger, but made a great effort to control himself. And then he looked up at us, once more a little severely, and brought confusion to all our hopes with one simple question. “Where is Colin?” he said.

What could be more natural? Charlotte gave me one look, and stood, white as death, motionless, her fingers twisting together. How truly she had said that falsehood was its own punishment, even such falsehood as this! She had answered him with ambiguous words when he was in the state of feebleness from which he had thus awoke, and he had been easily satisfied and diverted from too close inquiry. But now she was confounded by the sudden question. She could not confront with a subterfuge her father’s serious eyes; her head drooped, her hands caught at each other with a pitiful clasp, while he sat looking at her with an authoritative, but as yet unalarmed, look. All this time the door had been left ajar, and Marg’ret stood waiting outside, listening to all that went on, too much interested and anxious to feel herself out of place. But when she heard this demand the woman was struck with horror. She made a step within the door. “Oh, Ellermore!” she cried. “Oh! my auld maister, dinna break her heart and mine! To hear ye asking for Colin! and Colin in his grave this four long months, poor lad, poor lad!” She threw her apron over her head as she spoke, and burst forth into loud sobs and tears. Charlotte had put out a hand to stop the revelation, but dropped it again, and stood by speechless, her head bent, and wringing her hands, a silent image of grief and guilt, as if it had been her from whom the blow came.

The old man sat and listened with a countenance growing ashy pale, and with intent eyes, that seemed to flicker as if beyond his control. He tried to speak, but in the trembling of his lips could articulate nothing. Then he slowly raised himself up and stood pallid and dizzy, like a man on the edge of a precipice.

“My son is dead, and I knew it not,” he said slowly, pausing between the words. He stood with his trembling lips falling apart, his countenance all moving and twitching, transfixed, it seemed, by a sort of woeful amaze, wondering at himself. Then he turned upon Charlotte, with a piteous appeal. “Was I told, and have I forgotten?” he asked. The humiliation of that thought overpowered his re-awakened soul.

She came to him quickly and put her arm round him. “Father, dear, you were so ill, they would not let us tell you. Oh, I have known, I have known it would be so much the worse when it came!”

He put her away from him, and sat down again feebly in his chair. In that dreadful moment he wanted no one. The horror of the individual humiliation, the idea that he could have heard and forgotten, was more terrible even than the dreadful news which thus burst upon him. “I’m glad,” he said, “I’m glad,” babbling with his loose lips. I shrank away, feeling it a profanation to be here, a spectator of the last mystery of nature; but Charlotte made a faint motion that kept me from withdrawing altogether. For the first time she was afraid; her heart had failed her.

For some minutes her father continued silent in his chair. The sunset had faded away, the misty twilight was falling. Marg’ret, guilty and miserable, but still unable altogether to subdue her sobs, throwing her white apron from her head, and looking round with a deprecating, apologetic glance, had withdrawn to the other side of the room. All was silence after that broken interchange of words. He lay back, clasping and unclasping his hands, his lips and features all moving, whether with a wish to speak or with the mere workings of emotions unspeakable, I cannot tell. When suddenly, all at once, with the voice of a strong man loud and full, he broke out into the cry which has sounded through all the world—the utterance of every father’s anguish. “Oh, Absalom, my son, my son! Would God that I had died for thee, my son, my son——”

We both rushed towards him simultaneously. He did not remark me, fortunately; but again he put Charlotte away. “What are you afraid for?” he said, almost sternly; “that I will fall back and be ill again? That is not possible. Ye think sorrow kills; but no, it stings ye back to life: it stings ye back to life,” he repeated, raising himself in his chair. Then he looked round him solemnly. “Marg’ret, my woman, come here, and give me your hand. We’re partners in trouble, you and me, and never shall we part. As long as this is my house there is a place in it for you. Afterwards, when it goes to——ah! when it goes to Charley,” he cried, with a sudden burst of unforeseen sobs.

Charlotte looked at me again. Her face was white with despair. How was this last news to be broken to him?

“Father,” she said, standing behind him, “you are sorely tried. Will you not come back to your room and rest till to-morrow, and then you will hear all? Then we will tell you—about all that has happened——”

Her voice shook like a leaf in the wind, but she managed to show no other sign of her terror and despair. There was a long pause after this, and we stood waiting, not knowing how the moment would terminate. I believe it was the sight of me that decided it after all. A quick movement of irritation passed over his face.

“I think you are right, Chatty,” he said; “I think you are right. I am not fit, in my shattered state, and with the information I have just received, to pay the attention I would like to pay——” He paused, and looked at me fixedly. “It is a great trouble to me that we have never been able to show you proper attention, Mr. Temple. You see, my son was detained; and now he is dead—and I’ve never known it till this moment. You will excuse a reception which is not the kind of reception I would like to give you.” He waved his hand. “You were my Colin’s friend. You will know how to make allowances. Yes, my dear, I am best in my own chamber. I will just go, with Mr. Temple’s permission—go—to my bed.”

A faint groan burst from him as he said these words; a kind of dreary smile flickered on his lips. “To my bed,” he repeated; “that is all we can do, we old folk, when we are stricken by God’s hand. Lie down, and turn our faces to the wall—our faces to the wall.” He rose up, and took his daughter’s arm, and made a few steps towards the door, which I was holding open for him. Then he turned and looked round with the air of one who has a favour to bestow. “You may come too, Marg’ret,” he said. “You can come and help me to my bed.”

This strange interruption of all plans, which it was evident filled Charlotte with despair, gave me much to think of, as I stayed behind in the slowly-darkening room. It was evident that now nothing could be concealed from him; and who was there so bold as to tell the bereaved father, in his first grief for his first-born, what horrors had accompanied Colin’s death, and what a penalty the family had to pay? It seemed to me that the premonition of some fresh calamity was in the air; and when Charlotte came down about half an hour later, like a ghost through the dim-coming shadows, I almost expected to hear that it had already occurred. But even in these depths of distress it was a happiness to me to feel that she came to me for relief. She told me that he had gone to bed without asking any further questions, and that Margaret, who had been Colin’s nurse, seemed almost more agreeable to him than herself. He had turned his face to the wall as he had said, and nothing but a long-drawn, occasional sigh told that he was awake. “I think he is not worse—in body,” she said. “He has borne it far better than we could have thought possible. But how am I to tell him the way it happened, and how am I to tell him about Ellermore?” She wept with a prostration and self-abandonment which alarmed me; but she stopped my remonstrances and entreaties with a motion of her hand. “Oh, let me cry! It is the only ease I have,” she said.

When she had gone away from me, restless, anxious, afraid to be out of hearing, I went out, myself, as restless, as incapable of banishing all these anxieties from my mind as she. The night was almost dark, soft and mild. It was one of those nights when the moon, without being visible, softens and ameliorates the gloom, and makes of night a sort of twilight. While I went pacing softly about, to occupy myself, a soft small rain began to fall; but this did not affect me in any way. It was rather soothing than disagreeable. I went down to the side of the loch, where the pale light on the water was touched by innumerable dimplings of the rain, then up again, round and round the house, not caring where I went. At this hour I had always avoided the Lady’s Walk, I can scarcely tell why. To-night, in my strange familiarity with everything, and carelessness of all but one subject, I suddenly turned into it with a caprice I could not account for, perhaps with an unexpressed wish for company, for somebody who might understand my thoughts. The mystic footsteps gave me a sort of pleasure. Whether it was habit or some new sense of human fellowship which Charlotte’s impassioned words had caused, I can scarcely tell; but the excitement with which I had always hitherto regarded the mysterious watcher here was altogether gone out of my mind. I felt a profound and tender pity for her rising in me instead. Was it possible that a spirit could be “over-anxious,” as Charlotte said, endeavouring vainly, and yet not undutifully, to take God’s supreme guardianship out of His hands? The thought was new to me. To think that a good and blessed creature could so err, could mistake so humanly and persevere so patiently, though never able to remedy the evils, seemed somehow more possible than that a guardian from Heaven could watch and watch for generations with so little result. This gave me a great compassion for the lonely watcher thus rebelling in a heavenly way of love against the law of nature that separated her from visible life. My old idea, that it might be Charlotte herself in an unconscious shadow-shape, whose protecting motherly love made these efforts unawares, glided gratefully into the feeling that it was an earlier Charlotte, her very kin and prototype, who could not even now let God manage her race without her aid. While I was thus thinking, I was startled once more by the same sigh which I had heard with Charlotte. Yes, yes, it might be the wind. I had no time to bandy explanations with myself. It was a soft long sigh, such as draws the very breath out of an over-laden bosom. I turned half round, it was so near to me; and there, by my side, so close that I could have touched her, stood the Lady whom I had seen so often—the same figure which I had met in the London streets and in the woods of Ellermore. I suppose I stepped back, with a little thrill of the old sensations, for she seemed to put out a hand in the pale gloom, and began to speak softly, quickly, as if there was scarcely time enough for what she had to say.

“I am going away like the rest,” she said. “None of them have ever bid me go before; but it is true—it is true what she says. I have never done any good—just frightened them, or pleased them. It is in better hands—it is in better hands.”

With this there came the familiar movement, the wringing of the hands, which was like Charlotte, and she seemed to weep; but before I could say anything (and what could I have said?) she cried with eagerness, “I came to you because you loved her, but you were too late—and now again, again! you may help if you will. It will be set before you to help, if you will.”

“How can I help?” I cried. “Tell me, Lady, whoever you are; I will do it, I will do it!—but how can I do it? Tell me——”

I put out my hand to touch her dress, but it melted out of my hold. She withdrew with a swift, shy movement. “It will be set before you,” she said, with a breathless faintness as if of haste; and already her voice was further off breathing away. “It will be set before you—I must not say more. One can never say more.”

“What can I do?” I cried; so much had I forgot the old terror that I put myself in her path, stopping the way. “Tell me how, how! Tell me, for God’s sake, and because of Charlotte!”

The shadowy figure retreated before me. It seemed to fade, then reappeared, then dissolved altogether into the white dimness, while the voice floated away, still saying, as in a sigh, “You may help, you may help, you may save——” I could hear no more. I went after this sighing voice to the end of the Walk; it seemed to me that I was pursuing, determined to hear her message, and that she softly fled, the hurrying footsteps becoming almost inaudible as they flew before me. I went on hotly, not knowing what I did, determined only to know what it was; to get an explanation, by what means I did not care. Suddenly, before I knew, I found my steps stumbling down the slope at the further end, and the pale water alive with all the dimplings of the rain appearing at my very feet. The steps sank upon the loch-side, and ceased with a thrill like the acutest sound. A silence more absolute than any I have heard in nature ensued. I stood gasping, with my foot touching the edge of the water; it was all I could do to arrest myself there.

I hurried back to the house in a state of agitation, which I cannot describe. It was partly nervous dread. I do not disguise this; but partly it was a bewildered anxiety and eagerness to know what the chance was which was to be set before me. That I had the most absolute faith in it I need hardly say. “You may help them if you will! You may help them if you will! I said it over and over to myself a thousand times with a feverish hurry and eagerness. Indeed, I did nothing but repeat it. When Charlotte came down late to tell me her father was asleep, that the doctor who had been sent for had pronounced his recovery real, I was walking up and down the half-lighted drawing-room, saying these words over and over to myself.

“He says it is wonderful, but it may be complete recovery,” Charlotte said; “only to tell him nothing we can help, to keep all the circumstances from him; especially, if it is possible, about Ellermore. But how is it possible? how can I do it? ‘Help if you will?’ Mr. Temple, what are you saying?”

“It is nothing,” I said; “some old rhyme that has got possession of me.”

She looked very anxiously into my face. “Something else has happened? You have seen or heard——” Her mind was so alive to every tone and glance that it was scarcely possible to conceal a thought from her.

“I have been in the Walk,” I said, “and being excited and restless, it was more than my nerves could bear.”

She looked at me again wistfully. “You would not deceive me, Mr. Temple,” she said; then returned to her original subject. The doctor was anxious, above all things, that Mr. Campbell should leave Ellermore to-morrow, that he should go early, and above all that he should not suspect the reason why. She had the same dread of the removal as ever, but there was no alternative, and not even a day’s delay was to be thought of, for every day, every hour, made the chances of discovery more.

“But you cannot keep up the delusion for ever,” I said, “and when it is found out?”

Again she wrung her hands. “It is against my judgment; but what can I do?” She paused a moment, and then said, with a melancholy dignity, “It can but kill him, soon or syne. I would not myself have my life saved by a lie; but I am weak where my father is concerned, and God understands all. Oh, I am beginning to feel that so, Mr. Temple! We search and search, and think what is best, and we make a hundred mistakes, but God sees the why and the wherefore. Whoever misunderstands, He never mis­understands.”

She went away from me in the calm of this thought, the secret of all calm. It seemed to me that I, in my blind anxiety guessing at the enigma that had been given to me, and my poor Lady vagrant from the skies, still trying to be the providence of this house, were left alike behind.

Next morning Charlotte came down to breakfast with me, which she had not done before. She told me that her father had passed a good night, that he had shed tears on awaking, and began to talk tenderly and calmly of Colin, and that everything seemed to promise that the softening and mournful pre-­occupation of grief, distracting his mind from other matters, would be an advantage to him. He was pleased to be left with Margaret, who had adored her nursling, and who had been fully warned of the necessity of keeping silence as to the circumstances of Colin’s death. The post-bag came in while we were talking. It lay on the table for a few minutes untouched, for neither of us were anxious for our correspondence. We were alone at table, and Charlotte had rested, though I had not, and was almost cheerful now that the moment had arrived for the final severance. The necessity of doing inspired her; and perhaps, though I scarcely dared to think so, this tranquil table at which we sat alone, which might have been our table, in our home, in a new life full of peace and sober happiness, soothed her. The suggestion it conveyed made the blood dance in my veins. For the moment it seemed as if the hope I dared not even entertain, for one calm hour of blessedness and repose, had come true.

At last she gave me the key, and asked me to open the bag. “I have been loth to disturb this peaceful moment,” she said, with a smile which was full of sweetness and confidence, “and nothing outside seems of much consequence just now; but the boys may have something to tell, and there will be your letters—will you open it, Mr. Temple?” I, too, was loth, more loth than she, to disturb the calm, and the outside world was nothing to me, while I sat here with her, and could fancy her my own. But I did what she told me. Letters are like fate, they must be encountered with all that is good and evil in them. I gave her hers, and laid out some, probably as important to them, though they seemed to me so trifling and unnecessary, that were for the servants. Then I turned to my own share. I had two letters, one with a broad black border, which had been forwarded from one place to another in search of me, and was nearly ten days old; for, like most people, I examined the outside first; the other a large, substantial blue letter, which meant business. I can remember now the indifference with which I opened them, the mourning envelope first. There were so many postmarks on it, that that of its origin, which would have enlightened me at once, never struck me at all.

Heaven above! what was this that met my eyes? An announcement, full of the periphrasis of formal regret, of the death of my old cousin Jocelyn ten days before. I gave a sort of fierce cry—I can hear it now—and tore open the second, the official letter. Of course I knew what it was; of course I was aware that nothing could interfere; and yet the opportuneness of the announcement was such, that human nature, accustomed to be balked, would not allow me to believe in the possibility. Then I sprang from my seat. “I must go,” I cried; “there is not a moment to lose. Stop all proceedings—do nothing about the going, for God’s sake, till I come back.”

“Mr. Temple, what has happened? Charley——,” cried Charlotte, blanched with terror. She thought some other catastrophe had happened, some still more fatal news that I would not tell her. But I was too much absorbed in my own excitement to think of this.

“Do nothing,” I said; “I will meet Charley on the way, and tell him. All will be right, all will be right, only wait till I come back.” I rushed to the door in my haste, then came back again, not knowing what I did, and had caught her in my arms before I was aware—not in my arms, but with my hands on her shoulders, holding her for one wild moment. I could hardly see her for the water in my eyes. “Wait,” I said, “wait till I come back! Now I can do what she said! Now my time is come; do nothing till I come back.” I let my hands drop down to hers, and caught them and kissed them in a wild tremor, beyond explanation. Then I rushed away. It was a mile or more to the little quay where the morning boat carried communications back to the world. I seemed to be there as on wings, and scarcely came to myself till I descended into the noise, the haze, the roar of the damp streets, the crowds and traffic of Glasgow. Next moment (for time flew and I with it, so that I took no note of its progress or my own) I was in the clamour of the “Works,” making my way through the grime and mud of a great courtyard, with machinery clanging round me on every side, from the big skeleton houses with their open windows—into the office, where Charley, in close converse with a stranger, jumped up with terror at the sight of me. “What has happened?” he cried; “my father?” I had scarcely breath enough to say what I had to say. “Your father,” I cried, “has come to himself. You can make no sale without him—every arrangement must be stopped at once.” All that I was capable of knowing was with a certainty, beyond all proof, that the man with whom Charley was talking, a sportsman in every line of his countenance and clothes, was the intending purchaser of Ellermore.

I remember little of the conversation that followed. It was stormy and excited, for neither would Charley be convinced nor would the other consent to be off his bargain. But I made my point clear. Mr. Campbell having recovered his faculties, it was clear that no treaty could be concluded without his consent. (It could not have been legal in any case, but I suppose they had in some way got over this.) I remember Charley turning upon me with a passionate remonstrance, when, almost by violence and pertinacity, I had driven his Cockney sportsman away. “I cannot conceive what is your object, Temple,” he said. “Are you mad? my father must give his consent; there is no possibility of a question about it. Ellermore must be sold—and as well to him as to another,” he said, with a sigh. I took out my blue letter, which I had huddled into my pocket, and laid it before him. “It is to me that Ellermore must be sold,” I said.

My inheritance had come—there was nothing wonderful about it—it was my right; but never did inheritance come at a more suitable moment. Charley went back with me that afternoon, after a hurried conference with his young brothers, who came round me, shaking my arms nearly off, and calling to each other in their soft young basses, like rolls of mild thunder, that, whatever happened, I was a good fellow, a true friend. If they had not been so bashful they would have embraced me, less I verily believe from the sense of escape from a great misery which they had scarcely realised, than from generous pleasure in what they thought a sort of noble generosity: that was their view of it. Charley perhaps was more enlightened. He was very silent during the journey, but at one point of it burst out suddenly upon me. “You are doing this for Chatty, Temple. If you take her away, it will be as bad as losing Ellermore.” I shook my head. Then, if never before, I felt the hopelessness of the position. “There is but one thing you can do for me: say not a word of that to her,” I said.

And I believe he kept counsel. It was of her own accord that Charlotte came up to me after the hurried interview in which Charley laid my proposal before her. She was very grave, though the sweetness of her look drew the heart out of my breast. She held out her hands to me, but her eyes took all warm significance out of this gesture. “Mr. Temple,” she said, “you may think me bold to say it, but we are friends that can say anything to one another. If in your great generosity there may yet be a thought—a thought that a woman might recompense what was done for her and hers——” Her beautiful countenance, beautiful in its love and tenderness and noble dignity, but so pale, was suddenly suffused with colour. She took her hands out of mine, and folded them together—“That is out of my power—that is out of my power!” she said.

“I like it better so,” I cried. God help me! it was a lie, and so she knew. “I want no recompense. It will be recompense enough to know you are here.”

And so it has remained ever since, and may, perhaps, for ever—I cannot tell. We are dear friends. When anything happens in the family I am sent for, and all is told to me. And so do I with her. We know all each other’s secrets—those secrets which are not of fortune or incident, but of the soul. Is there anything better in marriage than this? And yet there is a longing which is human for something more.

That evening I went back to the Lady’s Walk, with a sort of fanciful desire to tell her, the other, that I had done her bidding, that she had been a true guardian of her race to the last. I paced up and down through the dim hour when the sun ought to have been setting, and later, long into the twilight. The rain fell softly, pattering upon the dark glistening leaves of the evergreens, falling straight through the bare branches. But no soft step of a living soul was on the well-worn track. I called to her, but there was no answer, not even the answer of a sigh. Had she gone back heartsick to her home in Heaven, acknowledging at last that it was not hers to guard her race? It made my heart ache for her to think so; but yet it must have been a sweet grief and easily healed to know that those she loved were most safe in God’s only care when hers failed—as everything else must fail.

That is his story, given as far as I can in his own words. I fancy what he saw must, in spite of his denial, have been a young bear erect upon its hind legs, an attitude which they often assume when alarmed. In the uncertain light this would bear a resemblance to a human figure, especially to a man whose nerves were already somewhat shaken. Whatever it may have been, the occurrence is unfortunate, for it has produced a most unpleasant effect upon the crew. Their looks are more sullen than before and their discontent more open. The double grievance of being debarred from the herring fishing and of being detained in what they choose to call a haunted vessel, may lead them to do something rash. Even the harpooners, who are the oldest and steadiest among them, are joining in the general agitation.

Apart from this absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. The pack which was forming to the south of us has partly cleared away, and the water is so warm as to lead me to believe that we are lying in one of those branches of the Gulf Stream which run up between Greenland and Spitzbergen. There are numerous small Medusæ and sea-lemons about the ship, with abundance of shrimps, so that there is every possibility of “fish” being sighted. Indeed one was seen blowing about dinner time, but in such a position that it was impossible for the boats to follow it.

September 13th.—Had an interesting conversation with the chief mate Mr. Milne upon the bridge. It seems that our captain is as great an enigma to the seamen, and even to the owners of the vessel, as he has been to me. Mr. Milne tells me that when the ship is paid off, upon returning from a voyage, Captain Craigie disappears, and is not seen again until the approach of another season, when he walks quietly into the office of the company, and asks whether his services will be required. He has no friend in Dundee, nor does any one pretend to be acquainted with his early history. His position depends entirely upon his skill as a seaman, and the name for courage and coolness which he had earned in the capacity of mate, before being entrusted with a separate command. The unanimous opinion seems to be that he is not a Scotchman, and that his name is an assumed one. Mr. Milne thinks that he has devoted himself to whaling simply for the reason that it is the most dangerous occupation which he could select, and that he courts death in every possible manner. He mentioned several instances of this, one of which is rather curious, if true. It seems that on one occasion he did not put in an appearance at the office, and a substitute had to be selected in his place. That was at the time of the last Russian and Turkish war. When he turned up again next spring he had a puckered wound in the side of his neck which he used to endeavor to conceal with his cravat. Whether the mate’s inference that he had been engaged in the war is true or not I cannot say. It was certainly a strange coincidence.

The wind is veering round in an easterly direction, but is still very slight. I think the ice is lying closer than it did yesterday. As far as the eye can reach on every side there is one wide expanse of spotless white, only broken by an occasional rift or the dark shadow of a hummock. To the south there is the narrow lane of blue water which is our sole means of escape, and which is closing up every day. The captain is taking a heavy responsibility upon himself. I hear that the tank of potatoes has been finished, and even the biscuits are running short, but he preserves the same impassible countenance and spends the greater part of the day at the crow’s nest, sweeping the horizon with his glass. His manner is very variable, and he seems to avoid my society, but there has been no repetition of the violence which he showed the other night.

7.30 p.m.—My deliberate opinion is that we are commanded by a madman. Nothing else can account for the extraordinary vagaries of Captain Craigie. It is fortunate that I have kept this journal of our voyage, as it will serve to justify us in case we have to put him under any sort of restraint, a step which I should only consent to as a last resource. Curiously enough it was he himself who suggested lunacy and not mere eccentricity as the secret of his strange conduct. He was standing upon the bridge about an hour ago, peering as usual through his glass, while I was walking up and down the quarterdeck. The majority of the men were below at their tea, for the watches have not been regularly kept of late. Tired of walking, I leaned against the bulwarks, and admired the mellow glow cast by the sinking sun upon the great ice-fields which surround us. I was suddenly aroused from the reverie into which I had fallen by a hoarse voice at my elbow, and starting round I found that the captain had descended and was standing by my side. He was staring out over the ice with an expression in which horror, surprise, and something approaching to joy were contending for the mastery. In spite of the cold, great drops of perspiration were coursing down his forehead and he was evidently fearfully excited. His limbs twitched like those of a man upon the verge of an epileptic fit, and the lines about his mouth were drawn and hard.

“Look!” he gasped, seizing me by the wrist, but still keeping his eyes upon the distant ice, and moving his head slowly in a horizontal direction, as if following some object which was moving across the field of vision. “Look! There, man, there! Between the hummocks! Now coming out from behind the far one! You see her, you must see her! There still! Flying from me, by God, flying from me—and gone!”

He uttered the last two words in a whisper of concentrated agony which shall never fade from my remembrance. Clinging to the ratlines he endeavored to climb up upon the top of the bulwarks as if in the hope of obtaining a last glance at the departing object. His strength was not equal to the attempt, however, and he staggered back against the saloon skylights, where he leaned panting and exhausted. His face was so livid that I expected him to become unconscious, so lost no time in leading him down the companion, and stretching him upon one of the sofas in the cabin. I then poured him out some brandy, which I held to his lips, and which had a wonderful effect upon him, bringing the blood back into his white face and steadying his poor shaking limbs. He raised himself up upon his elbow, and looking round to see that we were alone, he beckoned to me to come and sit beside him.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” he asked, still in the same subdued, awesome tone so foreign to the nature of the man.

“No, I saw nothing.”

His head sank back again upon the cushions. “No, he wouldn’t without the glass,” he murmured. “He couldn’t. It was the glass that showed her to me, and then the eyes of love—the eyes of love. I say, doc, don’t let the steward in! He’ll think I’m mad. Just bolt the door, will you?”

I rose and did what he had commanded.

He lay quiet for a little, lost in thought apparently, and then raised himself up upon his elbow again, and asked for some more brandy.

“You don’t think I am, do you, doc?” he asked as I was putting the bottle back into the after-locker. “Tell me now, as man to man, do you think that I am mad?”

“I think you have something on your mind,” I answered, “which is exciting you and doing you a good deal of harm.”

“Right there, lad!” he cried, his eyes sparkling from the effects of the brandy. “Plenty on my mind—plenty! But I can work out the latitude and the longitude, and I can handle my sextant and manage my logarithms. You couldn’t prove me mad in a court of law, could you, now?” It was curious to hear the man lying back and coolly arguing out the question of his own sanity.

“Perhaps not,” I said, “but still I think you would be wise to get home as soon as you can and settle down to a quiet life for a while.”

“Get home, eh?” he muttered with a sneer upon his face. “One word for me and two for yourself, lad. Settle down with Flora—pretty little Flora. Are bad dreams signs of madness?”

“Sometimes,” I answered.

“What else? what would be the first symptoms?”

“Pains in the head, noises in the ears, flashes before the eyes, delusions——”

“Ah! what about them?” he interrupted. “What would you call a delusion?”

“Seeing a thing which is not there is a delusion.”

“But she was there!” he groaned to himself. “She was there!” and rising, he unbolted the door and walked with slow and uncertain steps to his own cabin, where I have no doubt that he will remain until to-morrow morning. His system seems to have received a terrible shock, whatever it may have been that he imagined himself to have seen. The man becomes a greater mystery every day, though I fear that the solution which he has himself suggested is the correct one, and that his reason is affected. I do not think that a guilty conscience has anything to do with his behavior. The idea is a popular one among the officers, and, I believe, the crew; but I have seen nothing to support it. He has not the air of a guilty man, but of one who has had terrible usage at the hands of fortune, and who should be regarded as a martyr rather than a criminal.

The wind is veering round to the south to-night. God help us if it blocks that narrow pass which is our only road to safety! Situated as we are on the edge of the main Arctic pack, or the “barrier” as it is called by the whalers, any wind from the north has the effect of shredding out the ice around us and allowing our escape, while a wind from the south blows up all the loose ice behind us and hems us in between two packs. God help us, I say again!

September 14th.—Sunday, and a day of rest. My fears have been confirmed, and the thin strip of blue water has disappeared from the southward. Nothing but the great motionless ice-fields around us, with their weird hummocks and fantastic pinnacles. There is a deathly silence over their wide expanse which is horrible. No lapping of the waves now, no cries of seagulls or straining of sails, but one deep, universal silence in which the murmurs of the seamen, and the creak of their boots upon the white, shining deck, seem discordant and out of place. Our only visitor was an Arctic fox, a rare animal upon the pack, though common enough upon the land. He did not come near the ship, however, but after surveying us from a distance fled rapidly across the ice. This was curious conduct, as they generally know nothing of man, and being of an inquisitive nature become so familiar that they are easily captured. Incredible as it may seem, even this little incident produced a bad effect upon the crew. “Yon puir beastie kens mair, aye an’ sees mair nor you nor me!” was the comment of one of the leading harpooners, and the others nodded their acquiescence. It is vain to attempt to argue against such puerile superstition. They have made up their minds that there is a curse upon the ship, and nothing will ever persuade them to the contrary.

The captain remained in seclusion all day except for about half an hour in the afternoon, when he came out upon the quarterdeck. I observed that he kept his eye fixed upon the spot where the vision of yesterday had appeared, and was quite prepared for another outburst, but none such came. He did not seem to see me although I was standing close beside him. Divine service was read as usual by the chief engineer. It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer-book is always employed, although there is never a member of that Church among either officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.

A glorious sunset, which made the great fields of ice look like a lake of blood. I have never seen a finer and at the same time more ghastly effect. Wind is veering round. If it will blow twenty-four hours from the north all will yet be well.

September 15th.—To-day is Flora’s birthday. Dear lass! it is well that she cannot see her boy, as she used to call me, shut up among the ice-fields with a crazy captain and a few weeks’ provisions. No doubt she scans the shipping list in the Scotsman every morning to see if we are reported from Shetland. I have to set an example to the men and look cheery and unconcerned; but God knows, my heart is very heavy at times.

The thermometer is at nineteen Fahrenheit to-day. There is but little wind, and what there is comes from an unfavorable quarter. Captain is in an excellent humor; I think he imagines he has seen some other omen or vision, poor fellow, during the night, for he came into my room early in the morning, and stooping down over my bunk whispered, “It wasn’t a delusion, doc, it’s all right!” After breakfast he asked me to find out how much food was left, which the second mate and I proceeded to do. It is even less than we had expected. Forward they have half a tankful of biscuits, three barrels of salt meat, and a very limited supply of coffee beans and sugar. In the after-hold and lockers there are a good many luxuries such as tinned salmon, soups, haricot mutton, etc., but they will go a very short way among a crew of fifty men. There are two barrels of flour in the storeroom, and an unlimited supply of tobacco. Altogether there is about enough to keep the men on half rations for eighteen or twenty days—certainly not more. When we reported the state of things to the captain, he ordered all hands to be piped, and addressed them from the quarterdeck. I never saw him to better advantage. With his tall, well-knit figure and dark, animated face, he seemed a man born to command, and he discussed the situation in a cool, sailor-like way which showed that while appreciating the danger he had an eye for every loophole of escape.

“My lads,” he said, “no doubt you think I brought you into this fix, if it is a fix, and maybe some of you feel bitter against me on account of it. But you must remember that for many a season no ship that comes to the country has brought in as much oil-money as the old ‘Pole-star,’ and every one of you has had his share of it. You can leave your wives behind you in comfort while other poor fellows come back to find their lasses on the parish. If you have to thank me for the one you have to thank me for the other, and we may call it quits. We’ve tried a bold venture before this and succeeded, so now that we’ve tried one and failed we’ve no cause to cry out about it. If the worst comes to the worst, we can make the land across the ice, and lay in a stock of seals which will keep us alive until the spring. It won’t come to that, though, for you’ll see the Scotch coast again before three weeks are out. At present every man must go on half rations, share and share alike, and no favor to any. Keep up your hearts, and you’ll pull through this as you’ve pulled through many a danger before.” These few simple words of his had a wonderful effect upon the crew. His former unpopularity was forgotten, and the old harpooner whom I have already mentioned for his superstition, led off three cheers, which were heartily joined in by all hands.

September 16th.—The wind has veered round to the north during the night, and the ice shows some symptoms of opening out. The men are in a good humor in spite of the short allowance upon which they have been placed. Steam is kept up in the engine-room, that there may be no delay should an opportunity for escape present itself. The captain is in exuberant spirits, though he still retains that wild “fey” expression which I have already remarked upon. This burst of cheerfulness puzzles me more than his former gloom. I cannot understand it. I think I mentioned in an early part of this journal that one of his oddities is that he never permits any person to enter his cabin, but insists upon making his own bed, such as it is, and performing every other office for himself. To my surprise he handed me the key to-day and requested me to go down there and take the time by his chronometer while he measured the altitude of the sun at noon. It is a bare little room containing a washing-stand and a few books, but little else in the way of luxury, except some pictures upon the walls. The majority of these are small cheap oleographs, but there was one water-color sketch of the head of a young lady which arrested my attention. It was evidently a portrait, and not one of those fancy types of female beauty which sailors particularly affect. No artist could have evolved from his own mind such a curious mixture of character and weakness. The languid, dreamy eyes, with their drooping lashes, and the broad, low brow unruffled by thought or care, were in strong contrast with the clean-cut, prominent jaw, and the resolute set of the lower lip. Underneath it in one of the corners was written “M. B., æt. 19.” That any one in the short space of nineteen years of existence could develop such strength of will as was stamped upon her face seemed to me at the time to be well-nigh incredible. She must have been an extraordinary woman. Her features have thrown such a glamour over me that though I had but a fleeting glance at them, I could, were I a draughtsman, reproduce them line for line upon this page of the journal. I wonder what part she has played in our captain’s life. He has hung her picture at the end of his berth so that his eyes continually rest upon it. Were he a less reserved man I should make some remark upon the subject. Of the other things in his cabin there was nothing worthy of mention—uniform coats, a camp-stool, small looking-glass, tobacco-box and numerous pipes, including an Oriental hookah—which by-the-bye gives some color to Mr. Milne’s story about his participation in the war, though the connection may seem rather a distant one.

11.20 p.m.—Captain just gone to bed after a long and interesting conversation on general topics. When he chooses he can be a most fascinating companion, being remarkably well-read, and having the power of expressing his opinion forcibly without appearing to be dogmatic. I hate to have my intellectual toes trod upon. He spoke about the nature of the soul, and sketched out the views of Aristotle and Plato upon the subject in a masterly manner. He seems to have a leaning for metempsychosis and the doctrines of Pythagoras. In discussing them we touched upon modern spiritualism, and I made some joking allusion to the impostures of Slade, upon which, to my surprise, he warned me most impressively against confusing the innocent with the guilty, and argued that it would be as logical to brand Christianity as an error, because Judas who professed that religion was a villain. He shortly afterwards bade me good-night and retired to his room.

The wind is freshening up, and blows steadily from the north. The nights are as dark now as they are in England. I hope to-morrow may set us free from our frozen fetters.

September 17th.—The bogie again. Thank Heaven that I have strong nerves! The superstition of these poor fellows, and the circumstantial accounts which they give, with the utmost earnestness and self-conviction, would horrify any man not accustomed to their ways. There are many versions of the matter, but the sum-total of them all is that something uncanny has been flitting round the ship all night, and that Sandie McDonald of Peterhead and “lang” Peter Williamson of Shetland saw it, as also did Mr. Milne on the bridge; so, having three witnesses, they can make a better case of it than the second mate did. I spoke to Milne after breakfast and told him that he should be above such nonsense, and that as an officer he ought to set the men a better example. He shook his weatherbeaten head ominously, but answered with characteristic caution. “Mebbe aye, mebbe na, doctor,” he said; “I didna ca’ it a ghaist. I canna’ say I preen my faith in sea bogles an’ the like, though there’s a mony as claims to ha’ seen a’ that and waur. I’m no easy feared, but maybe your ain bluid would run a bit cauld, mun, if instead o’ speerin’ aboot it in daylicht ye were wi’ me last night, an’ seed an awfu’ like shape, white an’ gruesome, whiles here, whiles there, an’ it greetin’ and ca’ing in the darkness like a bit lambie that hae lost its mither. Ye would na’ be sae ready to put it a’ doon to auld wives’ clavers then, I’m thinkin’.” I saw it was hopeless to reason with him, so contented myself with begging him as a personal favor to call me up the next time the spectre appeared—a request to which he acceded with many ejaculations expressive of his hopes that such an opportunity might never arise.

As I had hoped, the white desert behind us has become broken by many thin streaks of water which intersect it in all directions. Our latitude to-day was 80° 52´ N., which shows that there is a strong southerly drift upon the pack. Should the wind continue favorable it will break up as rapidly as it formed. At present we can do nothing but smoke and wait, and hope for the best. I am rapidly becoming a fatalist. When dealing with such uncertain factors as wind and ice a man can be nothing else. Perhaps it was the wind and sand of the Arabian deserts which gave the minds of the original followers of Mahomet their tendency to bow to kismet.

These spectral alarms have a very bad effect upon the captain. I feared that it might excite his sensitive mind, and endeavored to conceal the absurd story from him, but unfortunately he overheard one of the men making an allusion to it, and insisted upon being informed about it. As I had expected, it brought out all his latent lunacy in an exaggerated form. I can hardly believe that this is the same man who discoursed philosophy last night with the most critical acumen, and coolest judgment. He is pacing backwards and forwards upon the quarterdeck like a caged tiger, stopping now and again to throw out his hands with a yearning gesture, and stare impatiently out over the ice. He keeps up a continual mutter to himself, and once he called out, “But a little time, love—but a little time!” Poor fellow, it is sad to see a gallant seaman and accomplished gentleman reduced to such a pass, and to think that imagination and delusion can cow a mind to which real danger was but the salt of life. Was ever a man in such a position as I, between a demented captain and a ghost-seeing mate? I sometimes think I am the only really sane man aboard the vessel—except perhaps the second engineer, who is a kind of ruminant, and would care nothing for all the fiends in the Red Sea, so long as they would leave him alone and not disarrange his tools.

The ice is still opening rapidly, and there is every probability of our being able to make a start to-morrow morning. They will think I am inventing when I tell them at home all the strange things that have befallen me.

12 p.m.—I have been a good deal startled, though I feel steadier now, thanks to a stiff glass of brandy. I am hardly myself yet however, as this handwriting will testify. The fact is that I have gone through a very strange experience, and am beginning to doubt whether I was justified in branding every one on board as madmen, because they professed to have seen things which did not seem reasonable to my understanding. Pshaw! I am a fool to let such a trifle unnerve me, and yet, coming as it does after all these alarms, it has an additional significance, for I cannot doubt either Mr. Manson’s story or that of the mate, now that I have experienced that which I used formerly to scoff at.

After all it was nothing very alarming—a mere sound, and that was all. I cannot expect that any one reading this, if any one ever should read it, will sympathize with my feelings, or realize the effect which it produced upon me at the time. Supper was over, and I had gone on deck to have a quiet pipe before turning in. The night was very dark—so dark that standing under the quarter boat, I was unable to see the officer upon the bridge. I think I have already mentioned the extraordinary silence which prevails in these frozen seas. In other parts of the world, be they ever so barren, there is some slight vibration of the air—some faint hum, be it from the distant haunts of men, or from the leaves of the trees, or the wings of the birds, or even the faint rustle of the grass that covers the ground. One may not actively perceive the sound, and yet if it were withdrawn it would be missed. It is only here in these Arctic seas that stark, unfathomable stillness obtrudes itself upon you in all its gruesome reality. You find your tympanum straining to catch some little murmur, and dwelling eagerly upon every accidental sound within the vessel. In this state I was leaning against the bulwarks when there arose from the ice almost directly underneath me, a cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning, as it seemed to me, at a note such as prima donna never reached, and mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unutterable grief, seemed to be expressed in it and a great longing, and yet through it all there was an occasional wild note of exultation. It seemed to come from close beside me, and yet as I glared into the darkness I could make out nothing. I waited some little time, but without hearing any repetition of the sound, so I came below, more shaken than I have ever been in my life before. As I came down the companion I met Mr. Milne, coming up to relieve the watch. “Weel, doctor,” he said, “maybe that’s auld wives’ clavers tae? Did ye no hear it skirling? Maybe that’s a supersteetion? what d’ye think o’t noo?” I was obliged to apologize to the honest fellow, and acknowledge that I was as puzzled by it as he was. Perhaps to-morrow things may look different. At present I dare hardly write all that I think. Reading it again in days to come, when I have shaken off all these associations, I should despise myself for having been so weak.

September 18th.—Passed a restless and uneasy night still haunted by that strange sound. The captain does not look as if he had had much repose either, for his face is haggard and his eyes bloodshot. I have not told him of my adventure of last night, nor shall I. He is already restless and excited, standing up, sitting down, and apparently utterly unable to keep still.

A fine lead appeared in the pack this morning, as I had expected, and we were able to cast off our ice-anchor, and steam about twelve miles in a west-sou’-westerly direction. We were then brought to a halt by a great floe as massive as any which we have left behind us. It bars our progress completely, so we can do nothing but anchor again and wait until it breaks up, which it will probably do within twenty-four hours, if the wind holds. Several bladder-nosed seals were seen swimming in the water, and one was shot, an immense creature more than eleven feet long. They are fierce, pugnacious animals, and are said to be more than a match for a bear. Fortunately they are slow and clumsy in their movements, so that there is little danger in attacking them upon the ice.

The captain evidently does not think we have seen the last of our troubles, though why he should take a gloomy view of the situation is more than I can fathom, since every one else on board considers that we have had a miraculous escape, and are sure now to reach the open sea.

“I suppose you think it’s all right now, doctor?” he said as we sat together after dinner.

“I hope so,” I answered.

“We mustn’t be too sure—and yet no doubt you are right. We’ll all be in the arms of our own true loves before long, lad, won’t we? But we mustn’t be too sure—we mustn’t be too sure.”

He sat silent a little, swinging his leg thoughtfully backwards and forwards. “Look here,” he continued. “It’s a dangerous place this, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. I have known men cut off very suddenly in a land like this. A slip would do it sometimes—a single slip, and down you go through a crack and only a bubble on the green water to show where it was that you sank. It’s a queer thing,” he continued with a nervous laugh, “but all the years I’ve been in this country I never once thought of making a will; not that I have anything to leave in particular, but still when a man is exposed to danger he should have everything arranged and ready—don’t you think so?”

“Certainly,” I answered, wondering what on earth he was driving at.

“He feels better for knowing it’s all settled,” he went on. “Now if anything should ever befall me, I hope that you will look after things for me. There is very little in the cabin, but such as it is I should like it to be sold, and the money divided in the same proportion as the oil-money among the crew. The chronometer I wish you to keep yourself as some slight remembrance of our voyage. Of course all this is a mere precaution, but I thought I would take the opportunity of speaking to you about it. I suppose I might rely upon you if there were any necessity?”

“Most assuredly,” I answered; “and since you are taking this step, I may as well——”

“You! you!” he interrupted. “You’re all right. What the devil is the matter with you? There, I didn’t mean to be peppery, but I don’t like to hear a young fellow, that has hardly begun life, speculating about death. Go up on deck and get some fresh air into your lungs instead of talking nonsense in the cabin, and encouraging me to do the same.”

The more I think of this conversation of ours the less do I like it. Why should the man be settling his affairs at the very time when we seem to be emerging from all danger? There must be some method in his madness. Can it be that he contemplates suicide? I remember that upon one occasion he spoke in a deeply reverent manner of the heinousness of the crime of self-­destruction. I shall keep my eye upon him however, and though I cannot obtrude upon the privacy of his cabin, I shall at least make a point of remaining on deck as long as he stays up.

Mr. Milne pooh-poohs my fears, and says it is only the “skipper’s little way.” He himself takes a very rosy view of the situation. According to him we shall be out of the ice by the day after to-morrow, pass Jan Meyen two days after that, and sight Shet­land in little more than a week. I hope he may not be too sanguine. His opinion may be fairly balanced against the gloomy precautions of the captain, for he is an old and experienced seaman, and weighs his words well before uttering them.

The long-impending catastrophe has come at last. I hardly know what to write about it. The captain is gone. He may come back to us again alive, but I fear me—I fear me. It is now seven o’clock of the morning of the 19th of September. I have spent the whole night traversing the great ice-floe in front of us with a party of seamen in the hope of coming upon some trace of him, but in vain. I shall try to give some account of the circumstances which attended upon his disappearance. Should any one ever chance to read the words which I put down, I trust they will remember that I do not write from conjecture or from hearsay, but that I, a sane and educated man, am describing accurately what actually occurred before my very eyes. My inferences are my own, but I shall be answerable for the facts.

The captain remained in excellent spirits after the conversation which I have recorded. He appeared to be nervous and impatient however, frequently changing his position, and moving his limbs in an aimless, choreic way which is characteristic of him at times. In a quarter of an hour he went upon deck seven times, only to descend after a few hurried paces. I followed him each time, for there was something about his face which confirmed my resolution of not letting him out of my sight. He seemed to observe the effect which his movements had produced, for he endeavored by an overdone hilarity, laughing boisterously at the very smallest of jokes, to quiet my apprehensions.

After supper he went on to the poop once more, and I with him. The night was dark and very still, save for the melancholy soughing of the wind among the spars. A thick cloud was coming up from the north-west, and the ragged tentacles which it threw out in front of it were drifting across the face of the moon, which only shone now and again through a rift in the wrack. The captain paced rapidly backwards and forwards, and then seeing me still dogging him, he came across and hinted that he thought I should be better below—which I need hardly say had the effect of strengthening my resolution to remain on deck.

I think he forgot about my presence after this, for he stood silently leaning over the taffrail, and peering out across the great desert of snow, part of which lay in shadow, while part glittered mistily in the moonlight. Several times I could see by his movements that he was referring to his watch, and once he muttered a short sentence of which I could only catch the one word “ready.” I confess to having felt an eerie feeling creeping over me as I watched the loom of his tall figure through the darkness, and noted how completely he fulfilled the idea of a man who is keeping a tryst. A tryst with whom? Some vague perception began to dawn upon me as I pieced one fact with another, but I was utterly unprepared for the sequel.

By the sudden intensity of his attitude I felt that he saw something. I crept up behind him. He was staring with an eager, questioning gaze at what seemed to be a wreath of mist, blown swiftly in a line with the ship. It was a dim, nebulous body devoid of shape, sometimes more, sometimes less apparent, as the light fell on it. The moon was dimmed in its brilliancy at the moment by a canopy of thinnest cloud, like the coating of an anemone.

“Coming, lass, coming,” cried the skipper, in a voice of unfathomable tenderness and compassion, like one who soothes a beloved one by some favour long looked for, and as pleasant to bestow as to receive.

What followed, happened in an instant. I had no power to interfere. He gave one spring to the top of the bulwarks, and another which took him on to the ice, almost to the feet of the pale, misty figure. He held out his hands as if to clasp it, and so ran into the darkness with outstretched arms and loving words. I still stood rigid and motionless, straining my eyes after his retreating form, until his voice died away in the distance. I never thought to see him again, but at that moment the moon shone out brilliantly through a chink in the cloudy heaven, and illuminated the great field of ice. Then I saw his dark figure already a very long way off, running with prodigious speed across the frozen plain. That was the last glimpse which we caught of him—perhaps the last we ever shall. A party was organized to follow him, and I accompanied them, but the men’s hearts were not in the work, and nothing was found. Another will be formed within a few hours. I can hardly believe I have not been dreaming, or suffering from some hideous nightmare as I write these things down.

7.30 p.m.—Just returned dead beat and utterly tired out from a second unsuccessful search for the captain. The floe is of enormous extent, for though we have traversed at least twenty miles of its surface, there has been no sign of its coming to an end. The frost has been so severe of late that the overlying snow is frozen as hard as granite, otherwise we might have had the footsteps to guide us. The crew are anxious that we should cast off and steam round the floe and so to the southward, for the ice has opened up during the night, and the sea is visible upon the horizon. They argue that Captain Craigie is certainly dead, and that we are all risking our lives to no purpose by remaining when we have an opportunity of escape. Mr. Milne and I have had the greatest difficulty in persuading them to wait until to-morrow night, and have been compelled to promise that we will not under any circumstances delay our departure longer than that. We propose therefore to take a few hours’ sleep, and then to start upon a final search.

September 20th, evening.—I crossed the ice this morning with a party of men exploring the southern part of the floe, while Mr. Milne went off in a northerly direction. We pushed on for ten or twelve miles without seeing a trace of any living thing except a single bird, which fluttered a great way over our heads, and which by its flight I should judge to have been a falcon. The southern extremity of the ice-field tapered away into a long, narrow spit which projected out into the sea. When we came to the base of this promontory the men halted, but I begged them to continue to the extreme end of it, that we might have the satisfaction of knowing that no possible chance had been neglected.

We had hardly gone a hundred yards before McDonald of Peterhead cried out that he saw something in front of us, and began to run. We all got a glimpse of it and ran too. At first it was only a vague darkness against the white ice, but as we raced along together it took the shape of a man, and eventually of the man of whom we were in search. He was lying face downwards upon a frozen bank. Many little crystals of ice and feathers of snow had drifted on to him as he lay, and sparkled upon his dark seaman’s jacket. As we came up some wandering puff of wind caught these tiny flakes in its vortex, and they whirled up into the air, partially descended again, and then, caught once more in the current, sped rapidly away in the direction of the sea. To my eyes it seemed but a snowdrift, but many of my companions averred that it started up in the shape of a woman, stooped over the corpse and kissed it, and then hurried away across the floe. I have learned never to ridicule any man’s opinion, however strange it may seem. Sure it is that Captain Nicholas Craigie had met with no painful end, for there was a bright smile upon his blue, pinched features, and his hands were still outstretched as though grasping at the strange visitor which had summoned him away into the dim world that lies beyond the grave.

We buried him the same afternoon with the ship’s ensign around him, and a thirty-two-pound shot at his feet. I read the burial service, while the rough sailors wept like children, for there were many who owed much to his kind heart, and who showed now the affection which his strange ways had repelled during his lifetime. He went off the grating with a dull, sullen splash, and as I looked into the green water I saw him go down, down, down until he was but a pale flickering patch of white hanging upon the outskirts of eternal darkness. Then even that faded away and he was gone. There he shall lie, with his secret and his sorrows and his mystery all still buried in his breast, until that great day when the sea shall give up its dead, and Nicholas Craigie come out from among the ice with the smile upon his face, and his stiffened arms outstretched in greeting. I pray that his lot may be a happier one in that life than it has been in this.

I shall not continue my journal. Our road to home lies plain and clear before us, and the great ice-field will soon be but a remembrance of the past. It will be some time before I get over the shock produced by recent events. When I began this record of our voyage I little thought of how I should be compelled to finish it. I am writing these final words in the lonely cabin, still starting at times and fancying I hear the quick, nervous step of the dead man upon the deck above me. I entered his cabin to-night as was my duty, to make a list of his effects in order that they might be entered in the official log. All was as it had been upon my previous visit, save that the picture which I have described as having hung at the end of his bed had been cut out of its frame, as with a knife, and was gone. With this last link in a strange chain of evidence I close my diary of the voyage of the “Pole-star.”

[Note by Dr. John McAlister Ray, senior.—“I have read over the strange events connected with the death of the captain of the ‘Pole-star,’ as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most positive certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man, with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable, that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I chanced to come across Dr. P——, an old college chum of mine, now practising at Saltash, in Devonshire. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son’s, he declared to me that he was familiar with the man, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him, which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, except that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, he had been engaged to a young lady of singular beauty residing upon the Cornish coast. During his absence at sea his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror.”

He shut it quickly behind him, and felt as though some cold thing had settled on his back and were writhing upon him. The passage was quite dark, but he found his hat and was out in the alley in a moment, breathing more freely, and surprised to find how much light there still was in the open air. He could see the pavement clearly under his feet, and far off in the street to which the alley led he could hear the laughter and calls of children, playing some game out of doors. He wondered how he could have been so nervous, and for an instant he thought of going back into the house to wait quietly for Else. But instantly he felt that nervous fright of something stealing over him again. In any case it was better to walk up to Cranston House and ask the servants about the child. One of the women had perhaps taken a fancy to her, and was even now giving her tea and cake.

He walked quickly to Belgrave Square, and then up the broad streets, listening as he went, whenever there was no other sound, for the tiny footsteps. But he heard nothing, and was laughing at himself when he rang the servants’ bell at the big house. Of course, the child must be there.

The person who opened the door was quite an inferior person—for it was a back door—but affected the manners of the front, and stared at Mr. Puckler superciliously under the strong light.

No little girl had been seen, and he knew “nothing about no dolls.”

“She is my little girl,” said Mr. Puckler, tremulously, for all his anxiety was returning tenfold, “and I am afraid something has happened.”

The inferior person said rudely that “nothing could have happened to her in that house, because she had not been there, which was a jolly good reason why”; and Mr. Puckler was obliged to admit that the man ought to know, as it was his business to keep the door and let people in. He wished to be allowed to speak to the under nurse, who knew him; but the man was ruder than ever, and finally shut the door in his face.

When the doll-doctor was alone in the street, he steadied himself by the railing, for he felt as though he were breaking in two, just as some dolls break, in the middle of the backbone.

Presently he knew that he must be doing something to find Else, and that gave him strength. He began to walk as quickly as he could through the streets, following every highway and byway which his little girl might have taken on her errand. He also asked several policemen in vain if they had seen her, and most of them answered him kindly, for they saw that he was a sober man and in his right senses, and some of them had little girls of their own.

It was one o’clock in the morning when he went up to his own door again, worn out and hopeless and broken-hearted. As he turned the key in the lock, his heart stood still, for he knew that he was awake and not dreaming, and that he really heard those tiny footsteps pattering to meet him inside the house along the passage.

But he was too unhappy to be much frightened any more, and his heart went on again with a dull, regular pain, that ground its way all through him with every pulse. So he went in and hung up his hat in the dark, and found the matches in the cupboard and the candlestick in its place in the corner.

Mr. Puckler was so much overcome and so completely worn out that he sat down in his chair before the work-table and almost fainted, as his face dropped forward upon his folded hands. Beside him the solitary candle burned steadily with a low flame in the still, warm air.

“Else! Else!” he moaned against his yellow knuckles.

And that was all he could say, and it was no relief to him. On the contrary, the very sound of the name was a new and sharp pain that pierced his ears and his head and his very soul. For every time he repeated the name it meant that little Else was dead, somewhere out in the streets of London in the dark.

He was so terribly hurt that he did not even feel something pulling gently at the skirt of his old coat, so gently that it was like the nibbling of a tiny mouse. He might have thought that it was really a mouse if he had noticed it.

“Else! Else!” he groaned, right against his hands.

Then a cool breath stirred his thin hair, and the low flame of the one candle dropped down almost to a mere spark, not flickering as though a draught were going to blow it out, but just dropping down as if it were tired out. Mr. Puckler felt his hands stiffening with fright under his face; and there was a faint rustling sound, like some small silk thing blown in a gentle breeze. He sat up straight, stark and scared, and a small, wooden voice spoke in the stillness.

“Pa-pa,” it said, with a break between the syllables.

Mr. Puckler stood up in a single jump, and his chair fell over backwards with a smashing noise upon the wooden floor. The candle had almost gone out.

It was Nina’s doll-voice that had spoken, and he should have known it among the voices of a hundred other dolls. And yet there was something more in it, a little human ring, with a pitiful cry and a call for help, and the wail of a hurt child. Mr. Puckler stood up, stark and stiff, and tried to look round, but at first he could not, for he seemed to be frozen from head to foot.

Then he made a great effort, and he raised one hand to each of his temples, and pressed his own head round as he would have turned a doll’s. The candle was burning so low that it might as well have been out altogether, for any light it gave, and the room seemed quite dark at first. Then he saw something. He would not have believed that he could be more frightened than he had been just before that. But he was, and his knees shook, for he saw the doll standing in the middle of the floor, shining with a faint and ghostly radiance, her beautiful glassy brown eyes fixed on his. And across her face the very thin line of the break he had mended shone as though it were drawn in light with a fine point of white flame.

Yet there was something more in the eyes too; there was something human, like Else’s own, but as if only the doll saw him through them, and not Else. And there was enough of Else to bring back all his pain and to make him forget his fear.

“Else! My little Else!” he cried aloud.

The small ghost moved, and its doll-arm slowly rose and fell with a stiff, mechanical motion.

“Pa-pa,” it said.

It seemed this time that there was even more of Else’s tone echoing somewhere between the wooden notes that reached his ears so distinctly and yet so far away. Else was calling him, he was sure.

His face was perfectly white in the gloom, but his knees did not shake any more, and he felt that he was less frightened.

“Yes, child! But where? Where?” he asked. “Where are you, Else?”

“Pa-pa!”

The syllables died away in the quiet room. There was a low rustling of silk, the glassy brown eyes turned slowly away, and Mr. Puckler heard the pitter-patter of the small feet in the bronze kid slippers as the figure ran straight to the door. Then the candle burned high again, the room was full of light, and he was alone.

Mr. Puckler passed his hand over his eyes and looked about him. He could see everything quite clearly, and he felt that he must have been dreaming, though he was standing instead of sitting down, as he should have been if he had just waked up. The candle burned brightly now. There were the dolls to be mended, lying in a row with their toes up. The third one had lost her right shoe, and Else was making one. He knew that, and he was certainly not dreaming now. He had not been dreaming when he had come in from his fruitless search and had heard the doll’s footsteps running to the door. He had not fallen asleep in his chair. How could he possibly have fallen asleep when his heart was breaking? He had been awake all the time.

He steadied himself, set the fallen chair upon its legs, and said to himself again very emphatically that he was a foolish old man. He ought to be out in the streets looking for his child, asking questions, and inquiring at the police-stations, where all accidents were reported as soon as they were known, or at the hospitals.

“Pa-pa!”

The longing, wailing, pitiful little wooden cry rang from the passage, outside the door, and Mr. Puckler stood for an instant with white face, transfixed and rooted to the spot. A moment later his hand was on the latch. Then he was in the passage, with the light streaming from the open door behind him.

Quite at the other end he saw the little phantom shining clearly in the shadow, and the right hand seemed to beckon to him as the arm rose and fell once more. He knew all at once that it had not come to frighten him but to lead him, and when it disappeared, and he walked boldly towards the door he knew that it was in the street outside, waiting for him. He forgot that he was tired and had eaten no supper, and had walked many miles, for a sudden hope ran through and through him, like a golden stream of life.

And sure enough, at the corner of the alley, and at the corner of the street, and out in Belgrave Square, he saw the small ghost flitting before him. Sometimes it was only a shadow, where there was other light, but then the glare of the lamps made a pale-green sheen on its little Mother Hubbard frock of silk; and sometimes, where the streets were dark and silent, the whole figure shone out brightly, with its yellow curls and rosy neck. It seemed to trot along like a tiny child, and Mr. Puckler could almost hear the pattering of the bronze kid slippers on the pavement as it ran. But it went very fast, and he could only just keep up with it, tearing along with his hat on the back of his head and his thin hair blown by the night breeze, and his horn-rimmed spectacles firmly set upon his broad nose.

On and on he went, and he had no idea where he was. He did not even care, for he knew certainly that he was going the right way.

Then at last, in a wide, quiet street, he was standing before a big, sober-looking door that had two lamps on each side of it, and a polished brass bell-handle, which he pulled.

And just inside, when the door was opened, in the bright light, there was the little shadow, and the pale-green sheen of the little silk dress, and once more the small cry came to his ears, less pitiful, more longing.

“Pa-pa!”

The shadow turned suddenly bright, and out of the brightness the beautiful brown glass eyes were turned up happily to his, while the rosy mouth smiled so divinely that the phantom doll looked almost like a little angel just then.

“A little girl was brought in soon after ten o’clock,” said the quiet voice of the hospital doorkeeper. “I think they thought she was only stunned. She was holding a big brown paper box against her, and they could not get it out of her arms. She had a long plait of brown hair that hung down as they carried her.”

“She is my little girl,” said Mr. Puckler, but he hardly heard his own voice.

He leaned over Else’s face in the gentle light of the children’s ward, and when he had stood there a minute the beautiful brown eyes opened and looked up to his.

“Papa!” cried Else softly. “I knew you would come!”

Then Mr. Puckler did not know what he did or said for a moment, and what he felt was worth all the fear and terror and despair that had almost killed him that night. But by and by Else was telling her story, and the nurse let her speak, for there were only two other children in the room, who were getting well and were sound asleep.

“They were big boys with bad faces,” said Else, “and they tried to get Nina away from me, but I held on and fought as well as I could till one of them hit me with something, and I don’t remember any more, for I tumbled down, and I suppose the boys ran away, and somebody found me there. But I’m afraid Nina is all smashed.”

“Here is the box,” said the nurse. “We could not take it out of her arms till she came to herself. Should you like to see if the doll is broken?”

And she undid the string cleverly, but Nina was all smashed to pieces. Only the gentle light of the children’s ward made a pale green sheen in the folds of the little Mother Hubbard frock.