Chapter III (2)

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay he felt as if he were the only man in the world, so complete was the solitude through which he was passing. He was going over to attend the wedding of his best friend, and was, in fact, to act as the groomsman. Business had delayed him, and he was compelled to make his journey at night. But he hadn’t gone far before he began to feel the exhilaration of the skater. His skates were keen, his legs fit for a longer journey than the one he had undertaken, and the tang of the frost was to him what a spur is to a spirited horse.

He cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water. He could feel the tumult of the air as he cleft it. As he went on he began to have fancies. It seemed to him that he was enormously tall--a great Viking of the Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love. That reminded him that he had a love--though, indeed, that thought was always present with him as a background for other thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her she was his love, because he had only seen her a few times and the opportunity had not presented itself. She lived at Echo Bay, too, and was to be the maid of honor to his friend’s bride--which was another reason why he skated on almost as swiftly as the wind, and why, now and then, he let out a shout of exhilaration.

The one drawback in the matter was that Marie Beaujeu’s father had money, and that Marie lived in a fine house and wore otter skin about her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding, and that the jacket in which she kept a bit of her dead mother’s hair had a black pearl in it as big as a pea. These things made it difficult--nay, impossible--for Ralph Hagadorn to say anything more than “I love you.” But that much he meant to have the satisfaction of saying, no matter what came of it.

With this determination growing upon him he swept along the ice which gleamed under the starlight. Indeed, Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed to reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of light from the love star, but he was forced to turn his back upon it and face toward the northeast.

It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were a good deal frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, and at first he thought it an illusion. But he rubbed his eyes hard and at length made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in fluttering garments who sped over the snows fast as ever werewolf went. He called aloud, but there was no answer, and then he gave chase, setting his teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm young muscles. But however fast he might go the white skater went faster. After a time he became convinced, as he chanced to glance for a second at the North Star, that the white skater was leading him out of his direct path. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should not keep to his road, but the strange companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and so he followed.

Of course it came to him more than once that this might be no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see strange things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn’s father, who lived up there with the Lake Superior Indians and worked in the copper mines, had once welcomed a woman at his hut on a bitter night who was gone by morning, and who left wolf tracks in the snow--yes, it was so, and John Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day--if he were alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were is melted now!)

Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice flushed red at dawn and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at his destination. Then, as he took off his skates while the sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, Hagadorn chanced to glance lakeward, and he saw there was a great wind-rift in the ice and that the waves showed blue as sapphires beside the gleaming ice. Had he swept along his intended path, watching the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold grave. The white skater had been his guardian angel!

Much impressed, he went up to his friend’s house, expecting to find there the pleasant wedding furore. But someone met him quietly at the door, and his friend came downstairs to greet him with a solemn demeanor.

“Is this your wedding face?” cried Hagadorn. “Why, really, if this is the way you are affected, the sooner I take warning the better.”

“There’s no wedding to-day,” said his friend.

“No wedding? Why, you’re not----”

“Marie Beaujeu died last night----”

“Marie----”

“Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it somehow. She got worse and worse and talked all the time of you.”

“Of me?”

“We wondered what it all meant. We didn’t know you were lovers.”

“I didn’t know it myself; more’s the pity.”

“She said you were on the ice. She said you didn’t know about the big breaking up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore. Then she cried that you could come in by the old French Creek if you only knew----?”

“I came in that way,” interrupted Hagadorn.

“How did you come to do that? It’s out of your way.”

So Hagadorn told him how it came to pass.

And that day they watched beside the maiden, who had tapers at her head and feet, and over in the little church the bride who might have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. Then they buried her in her bridesmaid’s white, and Hagadorn was there before the altar with her, as he intended from the first. At midnight the day of the burial her friends were married in the gloom of the cold church, and they walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths on her grave.

Three nights later Hagadorn started back again to his home. They wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way and went when Venus made her bright path on the ice. He hoped for the companionship of the white skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The only voice he heard was the baying of a wolf on the north shore. The world was as white as if it had just been created and the sun had not yet colored nor man defiled it.

HOW HE CAUGHT THE GHOST.

“Yes, the house is a good one,” said the agent; “it’s in a good neighborhood, and you’re getting it at almost nothing; but I think it right to tell you all about it. You are orphans, you say, and with a mother dependent on you? That makes it all the more necessary that you should know. The fact is, the house is said to be haunted----”

The agent could not help smiling as he said it, and he was relieved to see an answering smile on the two faces before him.

“Ah, you don’t believe in ghosts,” he went on; “nor do I, for that matter; but, somehow, the reputation of the house keeps me from having a tenant long at a time. The place ought to rent for twice as much as it does.”

“If we succeed in driving out the ghost, you will not raise the rent?” asked the boy, with a merry twinkle in his eyes.

“Well, no--not this year, at any rate,” laughed the agent. And so the house was rented; and the slip of a girl and the tall lad, her brother, went their way.

Within a week the family had moved into the house, and were delighted with it. It was large and cool, with wide halls and fine stairways, and with more room than they needed. But that did not matter in the least, for they had always been cramped in small houses, suffering many discomforts; and they never could have afforded such a place as this if it had not been “haunted.”

“Blessings on the ghost!” cried Margaret, gaily, as she ran about as merry as a child. “Who would be without a ghost in the house, when it brings one like this?”

“And it is so near your school,” said the mother; “and I used to worry so over the long walk; and David can come home to lunch now, and you don’t know what a pleasure that will be.”

“It seems to me,” David gravely explained, “that if I should meet the ghost I would treat him with the greatest politeness and encourage him to stay. We shall not miss the room he takes, shall we? I think it would be well to set aside that room over yours, Maggie, for his ghostship’s own, for we shall not need that, you know. Besides, the door doesn’t shut, and he can go in and out without breaking the lock.”

And then they all laughed and had a great deal of fun over the ghost, which was a great joke to them.

They were very tired that night and slept soundly all night long. When they met the next morning there was more laughter about the ghost which was shy about meeting strangers, probably, and had made no effort to introduce himself. For the next three days they were all hard at work, trying to bring chaos into something like order; and then it was time for the school to open, and Margaret was to begin teaching, and David inserted an advertisement in the city papers for a maid-of-all-work, who might help their mother in their absence.

For one whole day prospective colored servants presented themselves and announced:

“Is dis de house whar dey wants a worklady? No, ma’am, I ain’ gwine to work in dis house. Ketch me workin’ in no ha’nted house.”

After which they each and all departed, and others came in their stead. One was secured after a while, but no sooner had she talked across the fence with a neighbor’s servant than she, too, departed.

“Never mind, children,” said Mrs. Craig, wearily, “I would much rather do the work than be troubled in this way.”

So the maid-of-all-work was dismissed and the Craig family locked the doors and went to their rooms, worn out with the day’s anxieties.

They had been in the house four days, and there had been neither sight nor sound of the ghost. The very mention of it was enough to start them all to laughing, for they were thoroughly practical people, with a fondness for inquiring into anything that seemed mysterious to them and for understanding it thoroughly before they let it go.

David was soon sleeping the sound sleep of healthy boyhood, and all was silent in the house, when Margaret stole softly into his room and laid her hand on his arm. He was not easy to waken, and several minutes had passed before he sat up in bed with an articulate murmur of surprise.

“Hush!” said Margaret, in a whisper, with her hand on his lips. “I want you to come into my room and listen to a sound that I have been hearing for some time.”

“Doors creaking,” suggested David, as he began to dress.

“Nothing of the kind,” was all she said.

They walked up the stairway, and along the upper hall to the door of the unused room. Something was wrong with the lock and the door would not stay fastened, as I have said.

Something that was not fear thrilled their hearts as they pushed the door further ajar, and stood where they could see every foot of the vacant floor. One of their own boxes stood in the middle of the room, but aside from that, nothing was to be seen, and they looked at one another in silence.

“Hold the lamp a minute, Maggie,” David said, at last, and then he went all over the room, and looked more particularly at its emptiness, and even felt the walls.

“Secret panels, you know,” he said, with a smile, but it was a very puzzled smile indeed.

“I can’t see what it could have been,” Margaret said, as they went down the stairs.

“No, I can’t see, either, but I’m going to see,” said David. “That was a chain, and chains don’t drag around by themselves, you know. A ghost could not drag a chain, if he were to try.”

“The conventional ghost very often drags chains,” said Margaret, as she closed the door of her room.

And then she lay awake all night and listened for the conventional ghost that dragged a chain, but it seemed that the weight of the chain must have wearied him, for he was not heard again.

The mother had slept through it all, and next morning they gave her a vivid account of the night’s adventure.

“Perhaps it was someone in the house,” she said, in alarm. There were no ghosts within the bounds of possibility, so far as she was concerned, but burglars were very possible, indeed.

Then Margaret and David both laughed more than ever.

“What fun it would be,” said David, “for a burglar to get into this house and try to find something worth carrying away!”

So they went on to the next night, all three fully determined to spend the night in listening for the ghost, and running him to earth if possible.

But it was Margaret that heard the ghost, after all. She had been sleeping and was suddenly startled wide awake, and there, overhead, was the sound of the chain dragging; and just as she was on the point of springing out of bed to call her brother, the chain seemed to go out of the upper room. She lay still and listened, and in a moment she heard it again.

It was coming down the stairs.

There was no carpet on the stairs, and she could hear the chain drop from step to step, until it had come the whole way down. There it was, almost at the door of her room, and something that was strangely like fear kept her lying still, listening in horrified silence.

Then it went along the hall, dragging close to the door; and then further away; and back and forth for awhile; and then it began dragging back up the stairs again. Step by step she could hear it drawn over the edge of every step--and by the time it had reached the top she remembered herself and called David.

Again did the brother and sister make a tour of the upper room, with the lamp. Not only that, but they looked into every nook and corner of the upper part of the house, and at last came back, baffled. They had seen nothing extraordinary, and they had not heard a sound.

“I’m going to see that ghost to-night,” David said to his sister the next evening.

“How?”

“I’m going to sit up all night at the head of the stairs. Don’t say anything about it to mother; it might make her uneasy.”

So, after the household were all quiet, David slipped into his place at the head of the stairs, and sat down to his vigil. He had placed a screen at the head of the stairway so that it hid him from view--as if a ghost cared for a screen--and he established himself behind it, and prepared to be as patient as he could.

It seemed to him that hours so long had never been devised as those the town clocks tolled off that night. He bore it until midnight moderately well, because, he argued with himself, if there were any ghosts about they would surely walk then; but they were not in a humor for walking; and still the hours rolled on without any developments. He took the fidgets, and had nervous twitches all over him, and at last he could endure it no longer, and had leaned his head back against the wall and was going blissfully to sleep when----

He heard a chain dragging just beyond the open door of that unused room.

In spite of himself a shiver ran down his back. There was no mistaking it; it was a real chain, if he had ever heard one. More than that, it had left the room, and was coming straight towards the stairs. The hall was dark, and it was impossible for him to see anything, although he strained his eyes in the direction of the sound. And even while he looked it had passed behind the screen, and was going down the stairs, dropping from step to step with a clank.

Half way down a narrow strip of moonlight from a stair-window lay directly across the steps. Whatever the thing was, it must pass through that patch of light, and David leaned forward and watched.

Down it went from step to step, and presently it had slipped through the light, and was down; and a little later it came back again, through the light, and up the stairs, and back into that unused room.

And then David slapped his knees jubilantly, and ran down to his room, and slept all the rest of the night.

Next morning he was very mysterious about his discoveries of the night before.

“Oh, yes, I saw the ghost,” he said to Maggie. “There; don’t ask so many questions; I’ll tell you more about it to-morrow, maybe.”

And that was all the information she could get from him. It was very provoking.

That day David made a purchase down town and brought home a bulky bundle, which he hid in his own room and would not let his sister even peep at.

“I’m going to try to catch a ghost to-night,” he said, “and you know how it is; if I brag too much beforehand, I shall be sure to fail.”

He was working with something in the hall after the others had retired; but he did not sit up this time. He went to bed, and Margaret listened at his door and found that he was soon asleep.

But away in the night they were all awakened by a squealing that brought them all into the hall in a great hurry; and there, at the head of the stairs, they found the huge rat-trap that David had set a few hours before, and in the midst of the toils was a rat.

“Why, David,” exclaimed the mother, “I didn’t know that there was a rat in the house.”

And then, all at once, she saw that there was a long chain hanging from a little iron collar around the creature’s neck, and she and Margaret cried together.

“And this was the ghost!”

Such a funny ghost when they came to think of it--this poor rat, with a nest in some hole of the broken chimney. He had been someone’s pet, once, perhaps; and now, the households he had broken up, the nights he had disturbed, the wild sensations he had created--it made his captors laugh to think that this innocent creature had been the cause of the whole trouble.

“I’ll get a cage for him, and take care of him for the rest of his life,” said David. “We owe him so much that we can’t afford to be ungrateful.”

The next morning he took the ghost-in-a-cage and showed it to the agent, and gave him a vivid account of the capture.

“So, you have a good house for about half price, all on account of that rat,” exclaimed the agent, grimly. “Young man--but never mind, you deserve it. What are you working for now? Six dollars a week? If you ever want to change your place--suppose you come around here. I think you need a business that will give you a chance to grow.”

And the agent and David shook hands warmly over the cage of the “ghost.”

GRAND-DAME’S GHOST STORY.

BY C. D.

I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not; some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we were sadly skeptical as to their being anything of the kind that could harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about “doppeigangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could not have a greater treat for good behavior than for our mother to draw on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her chair in her own cozy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:

It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains, and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the arm-chair before it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved ones near.

It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my arm-chair nearer the fire, and cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them, for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlors. What was the use? My books were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or married and away, the cold, grand parlors always seemed gloomy and sad; the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter them.

It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlors, running the whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly, did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.

While watching the gleams of light and darkling shades, unconsciously the wailing of the storm outside attracted my attention, there seemed to be odd noises of tapping on the windows, and sobs and sighs, as though someone was entreating entrance from the fierce tumult; and as I sat there, again I thought of Nancy Black, the old schoolgirl friend who had loved me so dearly, and the night when she went forth to meet the doom appointed her; resting my head upon my hand, I sat gazing in the fire, thinking over her strange life, and still stranger death, and wondering what could have become of the money and jewels that I knew she had once possessed.

While sitting thus, a queer sensation crept over me; it was not fear, but a feeling as though if I’d look up I’d see something frightful; a shiver, not like that of cold, ran from my head to my feet, and a sensation as though someone was breathing icy cold breath upon my forehead, the same feeling you would cause by holding a piece of ice to your cheek; it fluttered over my face and finally settled round my lips, as though the unseen one was caressing me, thrilling me with horror. But I am not fearful, nervous nor imaginative, and resolutely throwing off the dread that fell upon me, I turned round and looked up, and there, so close by my side that my hand, involuntarily thrown out, passed through her seeming form, stood Nancy Black. It was Nancy Black, and yet not Nancy Black; her whole body had a semi-transparent appearance, just as your hand looks when you hold it between yourself and a strong light; her clothing, apparently the same as worn in life, had a wavy, seething, flickering look, like flames have, and yet did not seem to burn.

“In the name of God, Nancy Black, what brought you here, and whence came you?” I exclaimed.

A hollow whisper followed:

“Thank you, my old friend, for speaking to me, and, oh, how deeply I thank you for thinking of me to-night--I shall have rest.”

Rest! I heard echoed, and a jeering laugh rang through the room that made her quiver at its sound.

“I have been near you often; but always failed to find you in a condition when you would be en rapport before to-night. What I came for I will tell you; whence I come, you need not know; suffice it to say, that were I happy I would not be here on such an errand, nor on such a night--it is only when the elements are in a tumult, and the winds wail and moan, that we come forth. When you hear these sounds it is souls of the lost you hear mourning their doom--’tis then they wander up and down, to and fro, their only release from their fearful home of torture and undying pain.

“I have come to tell you that you must go over to the old house, and in the back room I always kept locked, have the carpet taken up from toward the fireplace. You will see a plank with a knot-hole in it. Remove that, and you will find what caused me to lose my soul--have prayers said for me, for ’tis well to pray for the dead. The money and jewels give in charity; bury in holy ground the others you find, and pray for them and me. Ah! Jeannette, you thought your old friend, though strange and odd, pure and innocent. It is a bitter part of my punishment that I must change your thought of me. Farewell! Do not fail me, and I shall trouble you no more. But whenever you hear that wind howl and sweep round the house as it does to-night, know that the lost are near. It is their swift flight through space--fleeing before the scourge of memory and conscience--that causes that sound.

“That to-morrow you may not think you are dreaming, here is a token,” and she touched the palm of my hand with her finger-tips, and as you see, my child, to this day, there are three crimson spots in the palm of my hand that nothing will eradicate.

“Do not fail me, and pray for us, Jeannette, pray,” and with a longing, wistful gaze, and a deep, sobbing sigh, Nancy Black faded from my sight.

“Am I dreaming?” I exclaimed, as I rose from my chair and rang the bell. When the servant entered, I bade him attend to the fire and light the lamps, and I went through the room to see if any unusual arrangement of the furniture could have caused the appearance, but nothing was apparent, and I bade him send my maid to attend me in my chamber, for I could not help feeling unwilling to remain in the library any longer that evening.

While making my toilet for the night my maid said:

“Have you burned your hand, madam?”

Glancing hastily down, I saw three dark crimson spots upon the palm of my left hand. They had an odd look, seared as though touched by a red-hot iron, yet the flesh was soft, not burned and not painful. Making some excuse for it, I did not allude to it again, and dismissed her speedily, that I might reflect undisturbed over the singular occurrence. There were the marks upon my hand; I could not remove them, and they did not fade. In fact, their deep red made the rest of the palm lose its pinkish hue and look pale from the strong contrast. Could I have been asleep and dreamed it all, and by any means have done this to myself? I thought, but finally concluded that on the morrow I’d go over to Nancy Black’s old residence and settle the question; and with that conclusion had to content myself until the morrow came.

Nancy Black was an old friend from my girlhood, who had owned large property in the town, and lived all alone in a spacious stone house directly opposite my home, and who, when dying, had left me the sole legatee of her property.

When morning came I took the keys, and, with my maid, went over to Nancy’s house. It had never been disturbed since her death, which was sudden and somewhat singular, and the furniture remained just as she left it when taken to her last resting place. We went to the room Nancy had directed. I bade Sarah take up the carpet, and, sure enough, there was a plank with a knot-hole in it; so I sent her from the room, and lifted the plank myself, and there, between the two joints, rested a long box, the lid not fastened. Opening it, I was horrified to see two skeletons--those of an infant and of a woman, small in stature and delicate frame. In a moment it flashed before me that I saw all that remained of Nancy Black’s young sister, a girl of seventeen, who had left home somewhat mysteriously years ago, and had died while absent--at least, that was the version Nancy had given of her absence, and no one had dreamed of doubting it, her tale was so naturally told.

Left orphans when Lucy was only two years and Nancy eighteen, she had devoted her life to the care of this young girl, and when she found her sister had fallen, she, in her pride of name and position, had destroyed mother and child, that her shame might not be known, and had lived all those dreary years in that house with her fearful secret.

Round the box, heaped up on every side, were money and jewels, and a parchment scroll among them had written on it: “Lucy’s share of our father’s estate.” I carried out Nancy’s wishes to the letter, for I now firmly believed that she had come to me herself that night. To avoid scandal resting on the dead, I took our clergyman into my confidence, and with his assistance had the remains buried quietly in consecrated ground. The money and jewels were given to the poor, and the old building I turned into a home for destitute females; and morning and night, as I kneel in prayer, I pray forgiveness to rest upon Nancy Black and peace to her troubled soul.

A FIGHT WITH A GHOST.

BY Q. E. D.

“No, I never believed much in ghosts,” said the doctor. “But I was always rather afraid of them.”

“Have you ever seen one?” asked one of the other men.

The doctor took his cigar out of his mouth and contemplated the ash for a moment or two before replying. “I have had some rather startling experiences,” he said, after a pause, during which the rest of us exchanged glances, for the doctor has seen many things and is not averse to talking about them in congenial company. “Would you care about hearing one of them? It gives me the cold shivers now to speak of it.” We nodded, and the doctor, taking a sip as an antidote to the shivers, began:

“You remember George Carson, who played for the ‘Varsity some years ago; big chap, with a light mustache? Well, I saw a good deal of him before he married, while he was reading for the bar in town. It was just after he became engaged to Miss Stonor, who is now Mrs. Carson, that he asked me to go down to a place which his people had taken in the country. Miss Stonor was to be there and he wanted me to meet her. I could not go down for Christmas Day, as I had promised to be with my people. But as I had been working a bit too hard, and wanted a few days’ rest, I decided to run down for a few days about the New Year.

“Woodcote was a pleasant enough place to look at. There were two packs of hounds within easy distance, and it was not far enough from a station to cut you off completely from the morning papers. The Carsons had been lucky, I thought, in coming across such a good house at such a moderate figure. For, as George told me, the owner had been obliged to go abroad for his health, and was anxious not to leave the place empty all the winter. It was an old house, with big gables and preposterous corners all over the place, and you couldn’t walk ten paces along any of the passages without tumbling up or down stairs. But it had been patched from time to time and, among other improvements, a big billiard-room had been built out at the back. A country house in the winter without a billiard-room, when the frost stops hunting, is just--well, not even a gilded prison. The party was a small one; besides George and his father and mother, there were only a couple of Misses Carson, who, being somewhere in the early teens, didn’t count, and Miss Stonor, who, of course, counted a good deal, and, lastly, myself.

“Miss Stonor ought to have been happy, for George Carson, besides being an excellent fellow all around, was by no means a bad match, being an only son with considerable expectations. But, somehow or other, she did not strike me as looking either very well or very happy. She gave me the impression of having something on her mind, which made her alternately nervous and listless. George, I fancied, noticed it, and was puzzled by it, for I caught him several times watching her with an anxious and inquiring look, but, as I was not there as a doctor, of course it was no business of mine, though I discovered the reason before I left Woodcote.

“The second night after my arrival--we had been playing, I remember, a family pool; the rest had gone upstairs to bed--George and I adjourned to a sort of study, which he had arranged upstairs, for a final smoke and a chat before turning in. The study was next to his bedroom, and parted off from it by curtains. As we were settling down I missed my pipe, and remembered that I had laid it down in the billiard-room. On principle I never smoke another man’s pipe, so I lit a candle, the house being in darkness, and started away in search of my own. The house looked awfully weird by the flickering light of a solitary candle, and the stairs creaked in a particularly gruesome way behind me, just for all the world as though someone were following at my heels. I found my pipe where I had expected in the billiard-room, and came back in perhaps a little more hurry than was absolutely necessary. Which, perhaps, explains why I stumbled in the uncertain light over a couple of unforeseen stairs, and dropped my candle. Of course it went out, but after a little groping I found it. Having no matches with me I was obliged to feel my way along the banisters, for it was so dark that I could not see my hand in front of me. And as I slowly advanced, sliding my hand along the broad balustrade at my side, it suddenly slid over something cold and clammy, which was not balustrade at all; for, stopping dead, and closing my fingers round it for an instant, I felt that I was holding another hand, a skinny, bony hand, which writhed itself slowly from my grasp. And though I could hear nothing and see nothing, I was yet conscious that something was brushing past me and going up the stairs.

“‘Hi--what’s that? Who are you?’ I called.

“There was no answer.

“I admit that I was in a regular funk. I must have shown it in my face.

“‘What’s the matter?’ asked George, as I blundered into his study.

“‘Oh, nothing,’ I answered; ‘dropped my candle and lost the way.’

“‘But who were you talking to?’

“‘I was only swearing at the candle,’ I replied.

“‘Oh! I thought perhaps you had seen--somebody,’ replied George.

“Somehow I did not like to tell him the truth, for fear he would laugh at my nervousness. But I determined to keep an eye on my liver, and take a couple of weeks’ complete rest. That night I woke up several times with the feeling of that confounded hand under my own--a clammy hand which writhed as my fingers closed upon it.

“The next morning after breakfast I was in the billiard-room practicing strokes while Carson was over at the stables. Presently the door opened, and Miss Stonor looked in.

“‘Come in,’ I said; ‘George will be back from the stables in a few minutes. Meanwhile we can have fifty up.’

“‘I wanted to speak to you,’ she said.

“She was looking very tired and ill, and I began to think I should not have an uninterrupted holiday after all.

“‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked, having closed the door and come up to the table, where she stood leaning with both her hands upon it.

“‘No,’ I replied, missing an easy carrom as I remembered my experience of last night, ‘but I believe in fancy.’

“‘And, supposing then that a person fancied he saw things, is there any remedy?’

“‘What do you mean, Miss Stonor?’ I replied, looking at her in some surprise. ‘Do you mean that you fancy----’

“I stopped, for Miss Stonor turned away, sat down on one of the easy-chairs by the wall, and burst into tears.

“‘Oh! please help me’ she sobbed; ‘I believe I am going mad.’

“I laid down my cue and went over to her.

“‘Look here, Miss Stonor,’ I said, taking her hand, which was hot and feverish, ‘I am a doctor, and a friend of George. Now tell me all about it, and I’ll do my best to set it right.’

“She was in a more or less hysterical condition, and her words were freely punctuated by sobs. But gradually I managed to elicit from her that nearly every night since she came to Woodcote she had been awakened in some mysterious way, and had seen a horrible face looking at her from over the top of a screen which stood by the door of her bedroom. As soon as she moved the face disappeared, which convinced her that the apparition existed only in her imagination. That seemed to distress her even more than if she had believed it to be a genuine ghost, for she thought her brain was giving way.

“I told her that she was only suffering from a very common symptom of nervous disorder, as indeed it was, and promised to send a groom into the village to get a prescription made up for her. And, having made me promise to breathe no word to anyone on the subject, more especially to George, she went away relieved. Nevertheless, I was not quite certain that I had made a correct diagnosis of the case. You see I had been rather upset myself not many hours before. George was longer than I expected at the stable, and I was just going to find him when at the door I met Mrs. Carson.

“‘Can you spare me one moment?’ she said, as I held open the door for her. ‘I wanted to find you alone.’

“‘Certainly, Mrs. Carson, with pleasure; an hour, if you wish,’ I replied.

“‘It is so convenient, you know, to have a doctor in the house,’ she said, with a nervous laugh. ‘Now I want you to prescribe me a sleeping draught. My nerves are rather out of order, and--I don’t sleep as I should.’

“‘Ah,’ I said, ‘do you see faces--and such like things when you wake?’

“‘How do you know?’ she asked quickly.

“‘Oh, I inferred from the other symptoms. We doctors have to observe all kinds of little things.’

“‘Well, of course, I know it is only fancy; but it is just as bad as if it were real. I assure you it is making me quite ill; and I didn’t like to mention it to Mr. Carson or to George. They would think I was losing my head.’

“I gave Mrs. Carson the same prescription as I had written for Miss Stonor, though by that time the conviction had grown upon me that there was something wrong which could not be cured by medicine. However, I decided to say nothing to George about the matter at present. For I could hardly utilize the confidence which had been placed in me by Miss Stonor and Mrs. Carson. And my own experience of the night before would scarcely have appeared convincing to him. But I determined that on the next day--which was Sunday--I would invent an excuse for staying at home from church and make some explorations in the house. There was obviously some mystery at work which wanted clearing up.

“We all sat up rather late that night. There seemed to be a general disinclination to go to bed. We stayed all together in the billiard-room until nearly midnight, and then loitered about in the hall, talking in an aimless sort of fashion. But at last Mrs. Carson said good-night, with a confidential nod to me, and Miss Stonor murmured, ‘So many thanks; I’ve got it,’ and they both went upstairs. George and I parted in the corridor above. Our rooms were opposite each other.

“I did not begin undressing at once, but sat down and tried to piece together some theory to account for the uncanniness of things. But the more I thought, the more perplexing it became. There was no doubt whatever that I had put my hand on something extremely alive and extremely unpleasant the night before. The bare recollection of it made me shudder. What living thing could possibly be creeping about the house in the dark? It was a man’s hand. Of that I was certain from the size of it. George Carson was out of the question, for he was in his room all the time. Nor was it likely that Mr. Carson, senior, would steal about his own house in his socks and refuse to answer when spoken to. The only other man in the house was an eminently respectable-looking butler; and his hand, as I had noted particularly when he poured out my wine at dinner, was plump and soft, whereas the mysterious hand on the balustrade was thin and bony. And then, what was the real explanation of the face which had appeared to the two ladies? Indigestion might have explained either singly. Extraordinary coincidences do sometimes occur, but it seemed too extraordinary that a couple of ladies--one old and one young--should suffer from the same indigestion in the same house, at the same time, and with the same symptoms. On the whole, I did not feel at all comfortable, and looked carefully in all the cupboards and recesses, as well as under the bed, before starting to undress. Then I went to the door, intending to lock it. Just as my hand was upon the key, I heard a soft step in the corridor outside, accompanied by a sound which was something between a sigh and a groan. Very faint, but quite unmistakable, and, under the circumstances, discomposing. It might, of course, be George. Anyhow, I decided to look and see. I turned the handle gently and opened the door. There was nothing to be seen in the corridor. But on the opposite side I could see a door open, and George’s head peeping round the corner.

“‘Hullo!’ he said.

“‘Hullo!’ I replied.

“‘Was that you walking up the passage?’ he asked.

“‘No,’ I answered, ‘I thought it might be you.’

“‘Then who the devil was it?’ he said. ‘I’ll swear I heard someone.’

“There was silence for a few moments. I was wondering whether I had better tell him of the fright I had already had, when he spoke again:

“‘I say, just come here for a bit, old fellow; I want to speak to you.’

“I stepped across the passage, and we went together into the little study which adjoined his bedroom.

“‘Look here,’ he said, poking up the fire, which was burning low, ‘doesn’t it strike you that there is something very odd about this house?’

“‘You mean----’

“‘Well, I wouldn’t say anything about it to the master or Miss Stonor for fear of frightening them. All the same, scarcely a night passes but I hear curious footsteps on the stairs. You’ve heard them yourself, haven’t you?’

“‘Now you mention it,’ I said, ‘I confess I have.’

“‘And, what is more,’ he continued, ‘I was sitting here two nights ago half asleep, and--it seems ridiculous, I know, but it’s a fact--I suddenly saw a horrible face glaring at me from between those curtains behind you. It was gone in a moment, but I saw it as plainly as I see you.’

“I moved my seat uneasily.

“‘Did you look in your bedroom or in the passage?’ I asked.

“‘Yes--at once,’ he replied. ‘There was nothing to be seen; but twice again that night I heard footsteps passing--good God!’

“He started up in his chair, staring straight over my shoulder. I turned quickly and saw the curtains which parted off the bedroom swing together.

“‘What is it?’ I asked, breathlessly.

“‘I saw it again--the same face--between the curtains.’

“I tore the hangings aside, and rushed into the next room. It was empty. The lamp was burning upon a side table, and the door was open, just as George had left it. In the passage outside all was quiet. I came back into the study and found George running his fingers through his hair in perplexity.

“‘There is clearly one person too many in the house,’ I said. ‘I think we ought to draw the place and find out who it is.’

“‘All right,’ said he, picking up the poker from the fireplace; ‘if it’s anything made of flesh and blood this will be useful, and if not----’

“He stopped short, for at that instant the most awful shriek of horror rang through the house--a shriek of wild, uncontrollable terror, such as I had never heard before and I never hope to hear again. One moment we stood staring at each other, dumbfounded. The next George Carson had dashed out of the room and down the corridor to the stairs. I followed close behind him. For we both knew that none but a woman in mortal fear would shriek like that, and that that woman was Miss Stonor.

“Down the stairs we tumbled pell-mell in the darkness. But before I reached the landing below, where Miss Stonor’s room was, I felt, as I had felt the evening before, something brush swiftly past me. As I ran I turned and caught at it in the dark. But my hand gripped only empty air. I was just about to turn back and follow it, when a cry from George arrested me, and, looking down, I saw him standing over the prostrate form of Miss Stonor. The door of her room was open, and by the moonlight which streamed into the room I could see her lying in her white nightdress across the threshold. What followed in the next few minutes I can scarcely recall with accuracy. The whole house was aroused by the poor girl’s awful shriek. She was quite unconscious when we came upon her, but she revived more or less as soon as Mrs. Carson and one of the terrified servants had lifted her into bed again. Nothing intelligible could be gathered from her, however, as to the cause of her fright; she only repeated, hysterically, again and again:

“‘Oh, the face; the face!’

“When I saw I could do her no further good for the present, I took George by the arm and led him out of the room.

“‘Look here, George,’ I said, ‘we must find out the reason of this at once. I am certain I felt something go by me as I came downstairs. Now does that staircase lead anywhere but to our rooms?’

“George considered for a moment.

“‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘there is a door at the end of the passage which leads up into a sort of lumber room.’

“‘Then we’ll explore it,’ I said. ‘For my part I can’t go to sleep until I’ve got to the bottom of this. Get the man to bring a lantern along.’

“The butler looked as though he didn’t half like the enterprise, and, to tell the truth, no more did I. It was the uncanniest job I ever undertook. However, we started, the three of us. First of all we searched the rooms on the floor above, where George and I slept. Everything was just as we had left it. Then I pushed open the door at the end of the corridor. A crazy-looking staircase led up into darkness. We went cautiously up, I first with a candle, then George, and last of all the butler with a lantern. At the top we stepped into a big, rather low room, with beams across the ceiling, and a rough, uneven floor. Our lights threw strange shadows into the corners, and more than once I started at what looked like a crouching human figure. We searched every corner. There was nothing to be seen but a few old boxes, a roll or two of matting, and some broken chairs. But in the far corner George pointed out to me a rickety ladder which ended at a closed trap-door. Just then I distinctly heard the curious, half groaning, half sighing sound which had already puzzled me in the corridor below. We stood still and looked at one another. We all heard the sound.

“‘Whatever it is, it’s up there,’ I said. ‘The question is, who is going up?’

“George put his candle down upon the floor and stepped upon the ladder. It cracked beneath his weight. He stopped.

“‘Come down; it won’t bear you,’ I said. ‘I shall have to go.’

“I don’t know that I was ever in such a queer funk as I was while I slowly mounted that ladder, and pushed open the trap-door. I had formed no clear idea of what I expected to find there. Certainly I was not prepared for what happened. For no sooner was the trap-door fully open than there fell--literally fell--upon me from the darkness above a thing in human shape, which kicked and spat and tore at me as I stood clinging to the ladder. It lasted but a moment or so, but in that moment I lived a lifetime of terror. The ladder swayed and cracked beneath me, and I fell to the floor with the thing gripping my throat like a vise. The next instant George had stunned it with a blow from the poker and dragged it off me. It lay upon its back on the floor--a ragged, hideous, loathsome shape. And the mystery was solved.”

“But you haven’t told us what it really was,” said one of the listeners.

The doctor smiled.