Nann laughed happily. “Maybe your Great-Aunt Jane is a fairy godmother in disguise,” she whispered. They both glanced at the far corner, but the black veiled figure was much more suggestive of a witch than a good fairy.
“The disguise surely is a complete one,” Dories said with a shudder. “My, it gives me the chilly shivers when I think how I might be going to spend a whole month alone with her. But now tell me, just what did happen?”
“Can’t you guess? You wrote your aunt a letter, didn’t you, telling all about me and even giving the name of the hotel where Dad and I were staying?”
Dories nodded, “Yes, that’s true. Mother wanted me to write to Aunt Jane and I couldn’t think of a thing to tell her about, and so I wrote about you.”
“Well,” Nann continued to enlighten her friend, “she must have written me that very day inviting me to be her guest at Siquaw Point for the month of October, but she asked me not to let you know. I sent the last picture postcard, the one of our hotel, just after I had received her letter, and you can imagine how wild I was to tell you. I hadn’t started going to the Boston High. Dear old Dad said a month later wouldn’t matter, and so here I am.” The girls clasped hands and beamed joyfully at each other.
Dories’ next glance toward the sleeping old woman was one of gratitude. “I’m going to try hard to love her, that is, if she’ll let me.” Then, after a thoughtful moment, Dories continued: “Great-Aunt Jane must have been very different when Dad was a boy, for he cared a lot for her, Mother said.” Then with one of her quick changes she exclaimed in a low voice, “Nann Sibbett, I have lain awake nights dreading the dismal month I was to spend at that forsaken summer resort. I just knew there’d be ghosts in those boarded-up cottages, but now that you’re going to be with me, I almost hope that something exciting will happen.”
“So do I!” Nann agreed.
It was four o’clock when the train, which consisted of an engine, two coaches and a chair-car, stopped in what seemed at first to be but wide stretches of meadows and marsh lands, but, peering ahead, the girls saw a few wooden buildings and a platform. “Siquaw Center!” the brakeman opened a door to announce. Miss Jane Moore sat up so suddenly, and when she threw back her veil she seemed so very wide awake, the girls found themselves wondering if she had really been asleep at all. The brakeman assisted the old woman to alight and placed her bags on the platform, then, hardly pausing, the train again was under way. Meadows and marshes stretched in all directions, but about a mile to the east the girls could see a wide expanse of gray-blue ocean.
“I guess the name means the center of the marshes,” Dori whispered, making a wry face while her aunt was talking to the station-master, a tall, lank, red-whiskered man in blue overalls who did not remove his cap nor stop chewing what seemed to be a rather large quid.
“Yeah!” the girls heard his reply to the woman’s question. “Gib’ll fetch the stage right over. Quare time o’ year for yo’ to be comin’ out, Mis’ Moore, ain’t it? Yeah! I got your letter this here mornin’. The supplies ar’ all ready to tote over to yer cottage.”
The girls were wondering who Gib might be when they heard a rumbling beyond the wooden building and saw a very old stage coach drawn by a rather boney old white horse and driven by a tall, lank, red-headed boy. A small girl, with curls of the same color, sat on the high seat at his side. “Hurry up, thar, you Gib Strait!” the man, who was recognizable as the boy’s father, called to him. “Come tote Mis’ Moore’s luggage.” Then the man sauntered off, having not even glanced in the direction of the two girls, but the rather ungainly boy who was hurrying toward them was looking at them with but slightly concealed curiosity.
Miss Moore greeted him with, “How do you do, Gibralter Strait.” Upon hearing this astonishing name, the two girls found it hard not to laugh, but the lad, evidently understanding, smiled broadly and nodded awkwardly as Miss Moore solemnly proceeded to introduce him.
To cover his embarrassment, the lad hastened to say. “Well, Miss Moore, sort o’ surprisin’ to see yo’ hereabouts this time o’ year. Be yo’ goin’ to the Pint?”
The old woman looked at him scathingly. “Well, Gibralter, where in heaven’s name would I be going? I’m not crazy enough yet to stay long in the Center. Here, you take my bags; the girls can carry their own.”
“Yessum, Miss Moore,” the boy flushed up to the roots of his red hair. He knew that he wasn’t making a very good impression on the young ladies. He glanced at them furtively as they all walked toward the stage; then, when he saw them smiling toward him, not critically but in a most friendly fashion, there was merry response in his warm red-brown eyes. What he said was: “If them bags are too hefty, set ’em down an’ I’ll come back for ’em.”
“O, we can carry them easily,” Nann assured him.
The small girl on the high seat was staring down at them with eyes and mouth open. She had on a nondescript dress which very evidently had been made over from a garment meant for someone older. When the girls glanced up, she smiled down at them, showing an open space where two front teeth were missing.
“What’s your name, little one?” Nann called up to her. The lad was inside the coach helping Miss Moore to settle among her bags.
The child’s grin grew wilder, but she did not reply. Nann turned toward her brother, who was just emerging: “What is your little sister’s name?” she asked.
The boy flushed. Nann and Dori decided that he was easily embarrassed or that he was unused to girls of his own age. But they better understood the flush when they heard the answer: “Her name’s Behring.” Then he hurried on to explain: “I know our names are queer. It was Pa’s notion to give us geography names, being as our last is Strait. That’s why mine’s Gibralter. Yo’ kin laugh if yo’ want to,” he added good-naturedly. “I would if ’twasn’t my name.” Then in a low voice, with a swift glance toward the station, he confided, “I mean to change my name when I come of age. I sure sartin do.”
The girls felt at once that they would like this boy whose sensitive face expressed his every emotion and who had so evident a sense of humor. They were about to climb inside of the coach with Miss Moore when a shrill, querulous voice from a general store across from the station attracted their attention. A tall, angular woman in a skimp calico dress stood there. “Howdy, Miss Moore,” she called, then as though not expecting a reply to her salutation, she continued: “Behring Strait, you come here right this minute and mind the baby. What yo’ gallavantin’ off fer, and me with the supper gettin’ to do?” Nann and Dori glanced at each other merrily, each wondering which strait the baby was named after.
The small girl obeyed quickly. Mrs. Strait impressed the listeners as a woman who demanded instant obedience. As soon as the three passengers were settled inside, the coach started with a lurch. The sandy road wound through the wide, swampy meadows. It was rough and rutty. Miss Moore sat with closed eyes and, as she was wedged in between two heavy bags, she was not jounced about as much as were the girls. They took it good-naturedly, but Dories found it hard to imagine how she could have endured the journey if she had been alone with her queer Aunt Jane. Nann decided that the old woman feined sleep on all occasions to avoid the necessity of talking to them.
At last, even above the rattle of the old coach, could be heard the crashing surf on rocks, and the girls peered eagerly ahead. What they saw was a wide strip of sand and a row of weather-beaten cottages, boarded up, as Dori had prophesied, and beyond them white-crested, huge gray breakers rushing and roaring up on the sand.
The boney white horse came to a sudden stop at the edge of the beach, nor would it attempt to go any farther. The boy leaped over a wheel and threw open the back door. “Guess you’ll have to walk a piece along the beach, Miss Moore. The coach gets stuck so often in the sand ol’ Methuselah ain’t takin’ no chances at tryin’ to haul it out,” he informed the occupants.
The girls were almost surprised to find that the horse hadn’t been named after a strait. Miss Moore threw back her veil and opened her eyes at once. Upon hearing what the boy had to say, she leaned forward to gaze at the largest cottage in the middle of the row. She spoke sharply: “Gibralter, why didn’t your father carry out my orders? I wrote him distinctly to open up the cottage and air it out. Why didn’t he do that when he brought over the supplies, that’s what I’d like to know? I declare to it, even if he is your father, I must say Simon Strait is a most shiftless man.”
The boy said at once, as though in an effort to apologize: “Pa’s been real sick all summer, Miss Moore, and like ’twas he fergot it, but I kin open up easy, if I kin find suthin’ to pry off the boards with. I think likely I’ll find an axe, anyhow, out in the back shed whar I used to chop wood fer you. I’m most sure I will.”
Miss Moore sank back. “Well, hurry up about it, then. I’ll stay in the coach till you get the windows uncovered.” When the boy was gone, the woman turned toward her niece. “Open up that small black bag, Dories; the one near you, and get out the back-door key. There’s a hammer just inside on the kitchen table, if it’s where I left it.” She continued her directions: “Give it to Gibralter and tell him, when he gets the boards off the windows, to carry in some wood and make a fire. A fog is coming in this minute and it’s as wet as rain.”
The key having been found, the girls ran gleefully around the cabin in search of the boy. They found him emerging from a shed carrying a hatchet. He grinned at them as though they were old friends. “Some cheerful place, this!” he commented as he began ripping off the boards from one of the kitchen windows. “You girls must o’ needed sea air a lot to come to this place out o’ season like this with a—a—wall, with a old lady like Miss Moore is.” Dories felt sure that the boy was thinking something quite different, but was not saying it because it was a relative of hers about whom he was talking. What she replied was: “I can’t understand it myself. I mean why Great-Aunt Jane wanted to come to this dismal place after everyone else has gone.”
They were up on the back porch and, as she looked out across the swampy meadows over which a heavy fog was settling, then she continued, more to Nann than to the boy: “I promised Mother I wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts, but honestly I never saw a spookier place.”
The boy had been making so much noise ripping off boards that he had only heard the last two words. “Spooks war yo’ speakin’ of?” he inquired. “Well, I guess yo’ll think thar’s spooks enough along about the middle of the night when the fog horn’s a moanin’ an’ the surf’s a crashin’ out on the pint o’ rocks, an’ what’s more, tharisfolks at Siquaw Center as says thar’s a sure enough spook livin’ over in the ruins that used to be ol’ Colonel Wadbury’s place.”
The girls shuddered and Dories cast a “Didn’t I tell you so” glance at her friend, but Nann, less fearful by nature, was interested and curious, and after looking about in vain for the “ruin”, she inquired its whereabouts.
Gibralter enlightened them. “O, ’tisn’t in sight,” he said, “that is, not from here. It’s over beyant the rocky pint. From the highest rock thar you kin see it plain.”
Then as he went on around the cottage taking off boards, the girls followed to hear more of the interesting subject. “Fine house it used to be when my Pa was a kid, but now thar’s nothing but stone walls a standin’. A human bein’ couldn’t live in that ol’ shell, nohow. But—” the boy could not resist the temptation to elaborate the theme when he saw the wide eyes of his listeners, “’long about midnight folks at the Center do say as how they’ve seen a light movin’ about in the old ruin. Nobody’s dared to go near ’nuf to find out what ’tis. The swamps all about are like quicksand. If you step in ’em, wall, golly gee, it’s good-bye fer yo’. Leastwise that’s what ol’-timers say, an’ so the spook, if thar is one over thar, is safe ’nuf from introosion.”
While the boy had been talking, he had removed all of the wooden blinds, his listeners having followed him about the cabin. Dories had been so interested that she had quite forgotten about the huge key that she had been carrying. “O my!” she exclaimed, suddenly noticing it. “But then you didn’t need the hammer after all. Now I’ll skip around and open the back door, and, Gibralter, will you bring in some wood, Aunt Jane said, to build us a fire?”
While the boy was gone, Nann confided merrily, “There now, Dories Moore, you’ve been wishing for an adventure, and here is one all ready made and waiting. Pray, what could be more thrilling than an old ruin surrounded by an uncrossable swamp and a mysterious light which appears at midnight?”
The boy returned with an armful of logs left over from the supply of a previous summer. “Gib,” Nann addressed him in her friendliest fashion, “may we call you that? Gibralter issolong. I’d like to visit your ruin and inspect the ghost in his lair. Really and truly, isn’t there any way to reach the place?”
The boy looked as though he had a secret which he did not care to reveal. “Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t,” he said uncommittedly. Then, with a brightening expression in his red-brown eyes, “Anyway, I’ll show you the old ruin if yo’ll meet me at sun-up tomorrow mornin’ out at the pint o’ rocks.”
“I’m game,” Nann said gleefully. “It sounds interesting to me all right. How about you, Dori?”
“O, I’m quite willing to see the place from a distance,” the other replied, “but nothing could induce me to go very near it.” Neither of the girls thought of asking the advice of their elderly hostess, who, at that very moment, appeared around a corner of the cabin to inquire why it was taking such an endless time to open up the cottage. Luckily Gib had started a fire in the kitchen stove, which partly mollified the woman’s wrath. After bringing in the bags and supplies, the boy took his departure, and they could hear him whistling as he drove away through the fog.
With the closing in of the fog, twilight settled about the cabin. The old woman, still in her black bonnet with the veil thrown back, drew a wooden armed chair close to the stove and held her hands out toward the warmth. “Open up the box of supplies, Dories,” she commanded, “and get out some candles. Then you can fill a hot-water bottle for me and I’ll go right to bed. No use making a fire in the front room until tomorrow. You girls are to sleep upstairs. You’ll find bedding in a bureau up there. It may be damp, but you’re young. It won’t hurt you any.”
Dories, having opened up the box of supplies, removed each article, placing it on the table. At the very bottom she found a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper: “Out of candles. Send some tomorrer.”
Miss Moore sat up ramrod-straight, her sharp gray eyes narrowing angrily. “If that isn’t just like that shiftless, good-for-nothing Simon Strait. How did he suppose we could get on without light? I wish now I had ordered kerosene, but I thought, just at first, that candles would do.” In the dusk Nann had been looking about the kitchen. On a shelf she saw a lantern and two glass lamps. “O, Miss Moore!” she exclaimed, “Don’t you think maybe there might be oil in one of those lamps?”
“No, I don’t,” the old woman replied. “I always had my maid empty them the last thing for fear of fire.” Nann, standing on a chair, had taken down the lantern. Her face brightened. “I hear a swish,” she said hopefully, “and so it must be oil.” With a piece of wrapping paper she wiped off the dust while Dories brought forth a box of matches.
A dim, sputtering light rewarded them. “It won’t last long,” Nann said as she placed the lantern on the table, “So, Miss Moore, if you’ll tell us what to do to make you comfortable, we’ll hurry around and do it.”
“Comfortable? Humph! We won’t any of us be very comfortable with such a wet fog penetrating even into our bones.” The old woman complained so bitterly that Dories found herself wondering why her Great-Aunt Jane had come at all if she had known that she would be uncomfortable. But she had no time to give the matter further thought, for Miss Moore was issuing orders. “Dories, you work that pump-handle over there in the sink. If it needs priming, we won’t get any water tonight. Well, thank goodness, it doesn’t. That’s one thing that went right. Nann, you rinse out the tea kettle, fill it and set it to boil. Now you girls take the lantern and go to my bedroom. It’s just off the big front room, so you can’t miss it; open up the bottom bureau drawer and fetch out my bedding. We’ll hang it over chairs by the stove till the damp gets out of it.”
Nann took the sputtering lantern and, being the fearless one of the two, she led the way into the big front room of the cabin. The furniture could not be seen for the sheetlike coverings. In the dim light the girls could see a few pictures turned face to the wall. “Oh-oo!” Dories shuddered. “It’s clammily damp in here. Think of it, Nann, can you conceivewhatit would have been like formeif I had come all alone with Aunt Jane? Well, I know just as well as I know anything that I would never have lived through this first night.”
Nann laughed merrily. “O, Dori,” she exclaimed as she held the lantern up, “Do look at this wonderful, huge stone fireplace. I’m sure we’re going to enjoy it here when we get things straightened around and the sun is shining. You see if we don’t.” Nann was opening a door which she believed must lead into Miss Moore’s bedroom, and she was right. The dim, flickering light revealed an old-fashioned hand-turned bed with four high posts. Near was an antique bureau, and Dori quickly opened the bottom drawer and took out the needed bedding. With her arms piled high, she followed the lantern-bearer back to the kitchen. Miss Moore had evidently not moved from her chair by the stove. “Put on another piece of wood, Dori,” she commanded. “Now fetch all the chairs up and spread the bedding on it.”
When this had been done, the teakettle was singing, and Nann said brightly, “What a little optimist a teakettle is! It sings even when things are darkest.”
“You mean when things are hottest,” Dori put in, actually laughing.
The old woman was still giving orders. “The dishes are in that cupboard over the table,” she nodded in that direction. “Fetch out a cup and saucer, Dories, wash them with some hot water and make me a cup of tea. Then, while I drink it, you can both spread up my bed.”
Fifteen minutes later all these things had been accomplished. The old woman acknowledged that she was as comfortable as possible in her warm bed. When they had said good-night, she called, “Dories, I forgot to tell you the stairway to your room leads up from the back porch.” Then she added, as an afterthought, “You girls will want to eat something, but for mercy sake, do close the living-room door so I won’t hear your clatter.”
Nann, whose enjoyment of the situation was real and not feined, placed the sputtering lantern on the kitchen table while Dories softly closed the door as she had been directed. Then they stood and gazed at the supplies still in boxes and bundles on the oilcloth-covered table. “I never was hungrier!” Dories announced. “But there isn’t time to really cook anything before the light will go out. Oh-oo! Think how terrible it would be to have to climb up that cold, wet outside stairway to a room in the loft and get into cold, wet bedding, and all in the dark.”
Nann laughed. “Well, I’ll confess itisrather spooky,” she agreed, “and if I believed in ghosts I might be scared.” Then, as the lantern gave a warning flicker, the older girl suggested: “What say to turning out the light and make more fire in the stove? It really is quite bright over in that corner.”
“I guess it’s the only thing to do,” Dori acknowledged dolefully. “O goodie,” she added more cheerfully as she held up a box of crackers. “These, with butter and some sardines,oughtto keep us from starving.”
“Great!” Nann seemed determined to be appreciative. “And for a drink let’s have cambric tea with canned milk and sugar. Now the next thing, where is a can opener?”
She opened a drawer in the kitchen table and squealed exultingly, “Dories Moore, see what I’ve found.” She was holding something up. “It’s a little candle end, but it will be just the thing if we need a light in the night when our oil is gone.”
“Goodness!” Dories shuddered. “I hope we’ll sleep so tight we won’t know it is night until after it’s over.”
Nann had also found a can opener and they were soon hungrily eating the supper Dories had suggested. “I call this a great lark!” the older girl said brightly. They were sitting on straight wooden chairs, drawn close to the bright fire, and their viands were on another chair between them.
“The kitchen is so nice and warm now that I hate plunging out into the fog to go upstairs,” Dori shudderingly remarked. “I presume that is where Aunt Jane’s maid used to sleep. Mumsie said she had one named Maggie who had been with her forever, almost. But she died last June. That must be why Aunt Jane didn’t come here this summer.”
When the girls had eaten all of the sardines and crackers and had been refreshed with cambric tea, they rose and looked at each other almost tragically. Then Nann smiled. “Don’t let’s give ourselves time to think,” she suggested. “Let’s take a box of matches. You get one while I relight the lantern. I have the candle end in my pocket. Now, bolster up your courage and open the door while I shelter our flickering flame from the cold night air that might blow it out.”
Dories had her hand on the knob of the door which led out upon the back porch, but before opening it, she whispered, “Nann, you don’t suppose that ghost over in the ruin ever prowls around anywhere else, do you?”
“Of course not, silly!” Nann’s tone was reassuring. “There isn’t a ghost in the old ruin, or anywhere else for that matter. Now open the door and let’s ascend to our chamber.”
The fog on the back porch was so dense that it was difficult for the girls to find the entrance to their boarded-in stairway. As they started the ascent, Nann in the lead, they were both wondering what they would find when they reached their loft bedroom.
The girls cautiously crept up the back stairway which was sheltered from fog and wind only by rough boards between which were often wide cracks. Time and again a puff of air threatened to put out the flickering flame in the lantern. With one hand Nann guarded it, lest it suddenly sputter out and leave them in darkness. There was a closed door at the top of the stairs, and of course, it was locked, but the key was in it.
“Doesn’t that seem sort of queer?” Dories asked as her friend unlocked the door, removed the key and placed it on the inside.
“Well, it does, sort of,” Nann had to acknowledge, “but I’m mighty glad it was there, or how else could we have entered?”
Dories said nothing, but, deep in her heart, she was wishing that she and Nann were safely back in Elmwood, where there were electric lights and other comforts of civilization.
Holding the lantern high, the girls stood in the middle of the loft room and looked around. It was unfinished after the fashion of attics, and though it was quite high at the peak, the sloping roof made a tent-like effect. There were two windows. One opened out toward the rocky point, above which a continuous inward rush of white breakers could be seen, and the other, at the opposite side, opened toward swampy meadows, a mile across which on clear nights could be seen the lights of Siquaw Center.
A big, old-fashioned high posted bed, an equally old-fashioned mahogany bureau and two chairs were all of the furnishings.
They found bedding in the bureau drawers, as Miss Moore had told them. Placing the lantern on the bureau, Nann said: “If we wish to have light on the subject, we’d better make the bed in a hurry. You take that side and I’ll take this, and we’ll have these quilts spread in a twinkling.”
Dories did as she was told and the bed was soon ready for occupancy. Then the girls scrambled out of their dresses, and, just as they leaped in between the quilts, the flame in the lantern sputtered and went out.
Dories clutched her friend fearfully. “Oh, Nann,” she said, “we never looked under the bed nor behind that curtained-off corner. I don’t dare go to sleep unless I know what’s there.”
Her companion laughed. “What do you ’spose is there?” she inquired.
“How can I tell?” Dories retorted. “That’s why I wish we had looked and then I would know.”
Her friend’s voice, merry even in the darkness, was reassuring. “I can tell you just as well as if I had looked,” she announced with confidence. “Back of these curtains, you would find nothing but a row of nails or hooks on which to hang our garments when we unpack our suitcases, and under the bed there is only dust in little rolled-up heaps—like as not. Now, dear, let’s see who can go to sleep first, for you know we have an engagement with our friend, Gibralter Strait, at sunrise tomorrow morning.”
“You say that as though you were pleased with the prospect,” Dories complained.
“Pleased fails to express the joy with which I anticipate the——” Nann said no more, for Dories had clutched her, whispering excitedly, “Hark! What was that noise? It sounds far off, maybe where the haunted ruin is.”
Nann listened and then calmly replied: “More than likely it’s the fog horn about which Gib told us, and that other noise is the muffled roar of the surf crashing over the rocks out on the point. If there are any more noises that you wish me to explain, please produce them now. If not, I’m going to sleep.”
After that Dories lay very still for a time, confident that she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Nann, however, was soon deep in slumber and Dories soon followed her example. It was midnight when she awakened with a start, sat up and looked about her. She felt sure that a light had awakened her. At first she couldn’t recall where she was. She turned toward the window. The fog had lifted and the night was clear. For a moment she sat watching the white, rushing line of the surf, then, farther along, she saw a dark looming object.
Suddenly she clutched her companion. “Nann,” she whispered dramatically, “there it is! There’s a light moving over by the point. Do you suppose that’s the ghost from the old ruin?”
“The what?” Nann sat up, dazed from being so suddenly awakened. Then, when Dories repeated her remark, her companion gazed out of the window toward the point.
“H’m-m!” she said, “It’s a light all right. A lantern, I should say, and its moving slowly along as though it were being carried by someone who is searching for something among the rocks.”
Dori’s hold on her friend’s arm became tighter. “It’s coming this way! I’m just ever so sure that it is. Oh, Nann, why did we come to this dreadful place? What if that light came right up to this cottage and saw that it wasn’t boarded up and knew someone was here and——”
Nann chuckled. “Aren’t you getting rather mixed in your figures of speech?” she teased. “A lantern can’t see or know, but of course I understand that you mean the-well-er-person carrying the lantern. I suppose you will agree that it is a person, for ghosts don’t have to carry lanterns, you know.”
“How do you know so much about ghosts, since you say there are no such things?” Dori flared.
“Well, nothing can’t carry a lantern, can it?” was the unruffled reply. Then the two girls were silent, watching the light which seemed now and then to be held high as though whoever carried it paused at times to look about him and then continued to search on the rocks.
Slowly, slowly the light approached the row of boarded-up cabins. The girls crept from bed and knelt at the window on the seaward side. Nann, because she was interested, and Dori because she did not want to be left alone.
“Do you think it’s coming this far?” came the anxious whisper. Nann shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s going back toward the point and so I’m going back to bed. I’m chilled through as it is.”
They were soon under the covers and when they again glanced toward the window the light had disappeared. “Seems to have been swallowed up,” Nann remarked.
“Maybe it’s fallen over the cliff. I almost hope that it has, and been swept out to sea.”
“Meaning the lantern, I suppose, or do you mean the carrier thereof?”
“Nann Sibbett, I don’t see how you can help being just as afraid of whatever it is, or, rather of whoever it is, as I am.”
“Because I am convinced that since it, or he, doesn’t know of my existence, I am not the object of the search, so why should I be afraid? Now, Miss Dories Moore, if you wish to stay awake speculating as to what became of that light, you may, but I’m going to sleep, and, if this loft bedroom of ours is just swarming with ghosts and mysterious lights, don’t you waken me to look at them until morning.”
So saying, Nann curled up and went to sleep. Dories, fearing that she would again be awakened by a light, drew the quilt up over her head so that she could not see it.
Although she was nearly smothered, like an ostrich, she felt safer, and in time she too slept, but she dreamed of headless horsemen and hollow-eyed skeletons that walked out on the rocky point at midnight carrying lanterns.
It was nearing dawn when a low whistle outside awakened the girls.
“It’s Gibralter Strait, I do believe,” Nann declared, at once alert. Then, as she sprang up, she whispered, “Do hurry, Dori. I feel ever so sure that we are this day starting on a thrilling adventure.”
The girls dressed hurriedly and silently, then crept down the boarded-in stairway and emerged upon the back porch of the cottage. It was not yet dawn, but a rosy glow in the east assured them that the day was near.
The waiting lad knew that the girls had something to tell, nor was he wrong.
“Oh, Gibralter, what do you think?” Dories began at once in an excited whisper that they might not disturb Great-Aunt Jane, who, without doubt, was still asleep.
“I dunno. What?” the boy was frankly curious.
“We saw it last night. We saw it with our very own eyes! Didn’t we, Nann?” The other maiden agreed.
“You saw what?” asked the mystified boy, looking from one to the other. Then, comprehendingly, he added: “Gee, you don’ mean as you saw the spook from the old ruin, do you?”
Dories nodded, but Nann modified: “Not that, Gibralter. Since there is no such thing as a ghost, how could we see it? But we did see the light you were telling about. Someone was walking along the rocks out on the point carrying a lighted lantern.”
“Wall,” the boy announced triumphantly, “that proves ’twas a spook, ’cause human beings couldn’t get a foothold out there, the rocks are so jagged and irregular like. But come along, maybe we can find footprints or suthin’.”
The sun was just rising out of the sea when the three young people stole back of the boarded-up cottages that stood in a silent row, and emerged upon the wide stretch of sandy beach that led toward the point.
The tide was low and the waves small and far out. The wet sand glistened with myriad colors as the sun rose higher. The air was tinglingly cold and, once out of hearing of the aunt, the girls, no longer fearful, ran along on the hard sand, laughing and shouting joyfully, while the boy, to express the exuberance of his feelings, occasionally turned a hand-spring just ahead of them.
“Oh, what a wonderful morning!” Nann exclaimed, throwing out her arms toward the sea and taking a deep breath. “It’s good just to be alive.”
Dories agreed. “It’s hard to believe in ghosts on a day like this,” she declared.
“Then why try?” Nan merrily questioned.
They had reached the high headland of jagged rocks that stretched out into the sea, and Gibralter, bounding ahead, climbed from one rock to another, sure-footed as a goat but the girls remained on the sand.
When he turned, they called up to him: “Do you see anything suspicious looking?”
“Nixy!” was the boy’s reply. Then anxiously: “D’ye think yo’ girls can climb on the tip-top rock?” Then, noting Dories’ anxious expression as she viewed the jagged cliff-like mass ahead of her, he concluded with. “O, course yo’ can’t. Hold on, I’ll give yo’ a hand.”
Very carefully the boy selected crevices that made stairs on which to climb, and the girls, delighted with the adventure, soon arrived on the highest rock, which they were glad to find was so huge and flat that they could all stand there without fear of falling.
“This is a dizzy height,” Dories said, looking down at the waves that were lazily breaking on the lowest rocks. “But there’s one thing that puzzles me and makes me think more than ever that what we saw last night was a ghost.”
“I know,” Nann put in. “I believe I am thinking the same thing.Howcould a man walk back and forth on these jagged rocks carrying a lantern?”
“Huh,” their companion remarked, “Spooks kin walk anywhar’s they choose.”
“Why, Gibralter Strait, I do believe that you think there is a ghost in—” She paused and turned to look in the direction that the boy was pointing. On the other side of the point, below them, was a swamp, dense with high rattling tullies and cat-tails. It looked dark and treacherous, for, as yet, the sunlight had not reached it. About two hundred feet back from the sea stood the forlorn ruin of what had once been, apparently, a fine stone mansion.
Two stained white pillars, standing in front, were like ghostly sentinels telling where the spacious porch had been. Behind them were jagged heaps of crumbling rock, all that remained of the front and side walls. The wall in the rear was still standing, and from it the roof, having lost its support in front, pitched forward with great yawning gaps in it, where chimneys had been.
Dories unconsciously clung to her friend as they stood gazing down at the old ruin. “Poor, poor thing,” Nann said, “how sad and lonely it must be, for, I suppose, once upon a time it was very fine home filled with love and happiness. Wasn’t it, Gibralter? If you know the story of the old house, please tell it to us?”
The boy cast a quick glance at the timid Dories. “I dunno as I’d ought to. She scares so easy,” he told them.
“I’ll promise not to scare this time,” Dories hastened to say. “Honest, Gib, I am as eager to hear the story as Nann is, so please tell it.”
Thus urged, the boy began. He did not speak, however, in his usual merry, bantering voice, but in a hollow whisper which he believed better fitted to the tale he had to tell.
“Wall,” he said, as he seated himself on a rock, motioning the girls to do likewise, “I might as well start way back at the beginnin’. Pa says that this here house was built nigh thirty year ago by a fine upstandin’ man as called himself Colonel Wadbury and gave out that he’d come from Virginia for his gal’s health. Pa said the gal was a sad-lookin’ creature as ever he’d set eyes on, an’ bye an’ bye ’twas rumored around Siquaw that she was in love an’ wantin’ to marry some furreigner, an’ that the old Colonel had fetched her to this out-o’-the-way place so that he could keep watch on her. He sure sartin built her a fine mansion to live in.
“Pa said ’twas filled with paintin’s of ancestors, and books an’ queer furreign rugs a hangin’ on the walls, though thar was plenty beside on the floor. Pa’d been to a museum up to Boston onct, an’ he said as ’twas purty much like that inside the place.
“Wall, when ’twas all finished, the two tuk to livin’ in it with a man servant an’ an old woman to keep an eye on the gal, seemed like.
“’Twan’t swamp around here in those days, ’twas sand, and the Colonel had a plant put in that grew all over—sand verbeny he called it, but folks in Siquaw Center shook their heads, knowin’ as how the day would come when the old sea would rise up an’ claim its own, bein’ as that had all been ocean onct on a time.
“Pa says as how he tol’ the Colonel that he was takin’ big chances, buildin’ a house as hefty as that thar one, on nothin’ but sand, but that wan’t all he built either. Furst off ’twas a high sea wall to keep the ocean back off his place, then ’twas a pier wi’ lights along it, and then he fetched a yacht from somewhere.
“Pa says he’d never seen a craft like it, an’ he’d been a sea-farin’ man ever since the North Star tuk to shinin’, or a powerful long time, anyhow. That yacht, Pa says, was the whitest, mos’ glistenin’ thing he’d ever sot eyes on. An’ graceful! When the sailors, as wore white clothes, tuk to sailin’ it up and down, Pa says folks from Siquaw Center tuk a holiday just to come down to the shore to watch the craft. It slid along so silent and was so all-over white, Gus Pilsley, him as was school teacher days and kep’ the poolhall nights, said it looked like a ‘phantom yacht,’ an’ that’s what folks got to callin’ it.
“Pa says it was well named, for, if ever a ghost rode on it, ’twas the gal who went out sailin’ every day. Sometimes the Colonel was with her, but most times ’twas the old woman, but she never was let to go alone. The Colonel’s orders was that the sailors shouldn’t go beyond the three miles that was American. He wasn’t goin’ to have his gal sailin’ in waters that was shared by no furreigners, him bein’ that sot agin them, like as not because the gal wanted to marry one of ’em. So day arter day, early and late, Pa says, she sailed on her ‘Phantom Yacht’ up and down but keepin’ well this side o’ the island over yonder.”
Gibralter had risen and was pointing out to sea. The girls stood at his side shading their eyes. “That’s it!” he told them. “That’s the island. It’s on the three-mile line, but Pa says it’s the mos’ treacherous island on this here coast, bein’ as thar’s hidden shoals fer half a mile all around it, an’ thar’s many a whitenin’ skeleton out thar of fishin’ boats that went too close.” The lad reseated himself and the girls did likewise. Then he resumed the tale. “Wall, so it went on all summer long. Pa says if you’d look out at sunrise like’s not thar’d be that yacht slidin’ silent-like up and down. Pa says it got to hauntin’ him. He’d even come down here on moonlit nights an’, sure nuf, thar’d be that Phantom Yacht glidin’ around, but one night suthin’ happened as Pa says he’ll never forget if he lives to be as old as Methusalah’s grandfather.”
“W-what happened?” the girls leaned forward. “Did the yacht run on the shoals?” Nann asked eagerly.
Gibralter was thoroughly enjoying their suspense. “Wall,” he drawled, making the moment as dramatic as possible, “’long about midnight, once, Pa heard a gallopin’ horse comin’ along the road from the sea. Pa knew thar wan’t no one as rode horseback but the old Colonel himself, an’, bein’ as he’d been gettin’ gouty, he hadn’t been doin’ much ridin’ of late days, Pa said, but thar was somethin’ about the way the horse was gallopin’ that made Pa sit right up in bed. He an’ Ma’d jest been married an’ started keepin’ house in the store right whar we live now. Pa woke up and they both listened. Then they heard someone hollerin’ an’ Pa knew ’twas the old Colonel’s voice, an’ Ma said, ‘Like’s not someone’s sick over to the mansion!’ Pa got into his clothes fast as greased lightnin’, took a lantern and went down to the porch, and thar was the ol’ Colonel wi’out any hat on. His gray hair was all rumped up and his eyes was wild-like. Pa said the ol’ Colonel was brown as leather most times, but that night he was white as sheets.
“As soon as the Colonel saw Pa, he hollered, ‘Whar kin I get a steam launch? I wanta foller my daughter. She an’ the woman that takes keer o’ her is plumb gone, an’, what’s more, my yacht’s gone too. They’ve made off wi’ it. That scalawag of a furriner that’s been wantin’ to marry her has kidnapped ’em all. She’s only seventeen, my daughter is, an’ I’ll have the law on him.’
“Pa said when he got up clost to the horse the Colonel was ridin’, he could see the old man was shakin’ like he had the palsy. Pa didn’t know no place at all whar a steam launch could be had, leastwise not near enuf to Siquaw to help any, so the old Colonel said he’d take the train an’ go up the coast to a town whar he could get a launch an’ he’d chase arter that slow-sailin’ yacht an’ he’d have the law on whoever was kidnappin’ his daughter.
“The ol’ Colonel was in an awful state, Pa said. He went into the store part o’ our house and paced up an’ down, an’ up an’ down, an’ up an’ down, till Pa thought he must be goin’ crazy, an’ every onct in a while he’d mutter, like ’twas just for himself to hear, ‘She’ll pay fer this, Darlina will!’”
The boy looked up and smiled at his listeners. “Queer name, wasn’t it?” he queried. “Most as funny as my name, but I guess likely ’taint quite.”