Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/533

 . 1, 1862.] Mr. Bourne remembered the wake, he need not have put the question.

An arrival at last. It was Jan. Jan, attentive to poor patients as he was to rich ones, had come striding over, the last thing. They asked him if he had seen anything of Alice in his walk. But Jan had come across from Deerham Court, and that would not be the girl’s road. Another minute and the husband came in. The two gentlemen left together.

“She is considerably better, to-night,” remarked Jan. “She’ll get about now, if she does not fret too much over Alice.”

“It is strange where Alice can have got to,” remarked Mr. Bourne. Her prolonged absence, coupled with the low spirits the girl appeared to be in, rather weighed upon his mind. “I met her as I was coming here an hour ago,” he continued. “She ought to have been home long before this.”

“Perhaps she has encountered the ghost,” said Jan, in a joke.

“I saw it to-night, Jan.”

“Saw what?” asked Jan, looking at Mr. Bourne.

“The—the party that appears to be personating Frederick Massingbird.”

“Nonsense!” uttered Jan.

“I did. And I never saw such a likeness in my life.”

“Even to the porcupine,” ridiculed Jan.

“Even to the porcupine,” gravely replied Mr. Bourne. “Jan, I am not joking. Moreover, I do not consider it a subject for a joke. If any one is playing the trick, it is an infamous thing, most disrespectful to your brother and his wife. And if not—”

“If not—what?” asked Jan.

“In truth, I stopped because I can’t continue. Frederick Massingbird’s spirit it cannot be—unless all our previous belief in non-appearance of spirits is to be upset—and it cannot be Frederick Massingbird in life. He died in Australia, and was buried there. I am puzzled, Jan.”

Jan was not. Jan only laughed. He believed there must be something in the moonlight that deceived the people, and that Mr. Bourne had caught the infection like the rest.

“Should it prove to be a trick that any one is playing,” resumed the clergyman, “I shall—”

“Halloa!” cried Jan. “What’s this? Another ghost?”

They had nearly stumbled over something lying on the ground. A woman, dressed in some light material. Jan stooped.

“It’s Alice Hook!” he cried.

The spot was that at which Mr. Bourne had seen her sitting. The empty bottle for medicine in her hand told him that she had not gone upon her errand. She was insensible, and cold.

“She has fainted,” remarked Jan. “Lend a hand, will you, sir?”

Between them they got her on the bench, and the stirring revived her. She sighed once or twice, and opened her eyes.

“Alice, girl, what is it? How were you taken ill?” asked the vicar.

She looked up at him; she looked at Jan. Then she turned her eyes in an opposite direction, glanced fearfully round, as if searching for some sight that she dreaded; shuddered, and relapsed into insensibility.

“We must get her home,” observed Jan.

“There are no means of getting her home in her present state, unless she is carried,” said Mr. Bourne.

“That’s easy enough,” returned Jan.

He caught her up in his long arms, apparently having to exert little strength in the action.

“Put her petticoats right, will you?” cried he, in his unceremonious fashion.

The clergyman put her things as straight as he could, as they hung over Jan’s arm.

“You’ll never be able to carry her, Jan,” said he.

“Not carry her!” returned Jan. “I could carry you if put to it.”

And away he went, bearing his burden as tenderly and easily as if it had been a little child. Mr. Bourne could hardly keep pace with him.

“You go on, and have the door open,” said Jan, as they neared the cottage. “We must get her in without the mother hearing up-stairs.up-stairs.” [sic]

They had the kitchen to themselves. Hook, the father, a little the worse for what he had taken, had gone to bed, leaving the door open for his children. They got her in quietly, found a light, and placed her in a chair. Jan took off her bonnet and shawl; he was handy as a woman; and looked about for something to give her. He could find nothing except water. By-and-by she got better.

Her first movement, when she fully recovered her senses, was to clutch hold of Jan on the one side, of Mr. Bourne on the other.

“Is it gone?” she gasped in a voice of the most intense terror.

“Is what gone, child?” asked Mr. Bourne.

“The ghost,” she answered. “It came right up, sir, just after you had left me. I’d rather die than see it again.”

She was shaking from head to foot. There was no mistaking that her terror was intense. To attempt to meet it with confuting arguments would have been simply folly, and both gentlemen knew that it would. Mr. Bourne concluded that the same sight, which had so astonished him, had been seen by the girl.

“I sat down again after you went, sir,” she resumed, her teeth chattering. “I knew there was no mighty hurry for my being back, as you had gone on to mother, and I sat on ever so long, and it came right up again me, brushing my knees with its things as it passed. At the first moment I thought it might be you coming back to say something to me, sir, and I looked up. It turned its face upon me, and I never remembered nothing after that.”

“Whose face?” questioned Jan.

“The ghost’s, sir. Mr. Fred Massingbird’s.”

“Bah!” said Jan. “Faces look alike in the moonlight.”

’Twas his face,” answered the girl, from