Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/334

 . 14, 1861.] We all went up in a body. Two or three of the servants were on the landing place.

“I am afraid, sir,” said the lady’s maid, half crying,” something’scrying, “something’s [sic] amiss. We can’t hear a sound. It’s all as still as death.”

Something painful shot across all our minds as we heard this speech.

We neared the door, the Squire tapped.

“Ellen! Ellen, love! answer, my darling; are you ill?”

No reply.

Mr. Griffith set his strong shoulder against the door, and by a violent effort, dashed it in. We entered. The room was tenantless,—empty.

“She has gone out, after all!” cried Herbert, running to the old oratory, and pointing to the long disused door, now wide open.

“Miss Ellen must have gone out last night,” stammered one of the women, “for the bed has not been touched.”

Last night! In the storm! Impossible. Yet on tracking farther we found on the terrace a bow of riband, drenched and heavy with moisture. It had evidently been dropped by its owner, and all recognised it as Ellen’s—on the previous night, before the rain began.

“She must be mad, my poor, poor child,” groaned the Squire, “or is she playing us a trick? No, she never could have the heart to trifle with us in such a way.”

Suddenly a horrid thought flashed across my mind. My dream! the dispute of the previous night—the strange resolve latent in Ellen’s face as she took leave of me—all these came crowding back.

“I know where she is;” I cried aloud. “I know it but too well. She is on the mountain, on Cader Idris, dead or mad by this, and I am the accursed cause.”

“My poor fellow, your anxiety makes you talk wildly,” said the Squire. “Cader Idris, how can she be there? Impossible!”

“She is there,” cried I, in an accent of agonized conviction that none could resist, “she spoke of going through the ordeal of the rock-chair last evening; and I, fool that I was, have slept while she was perishing in the tempest. Follow me, and waste no time. For Heaven’s dear love be quick, and bring restoratives, if in mercy it be not too late!”

My vehemence bore down all opposition. In foot of the mountain. But I outstripped them all. My heart was on fire, and my feet were gifted with unusual speed. Up, among the slippery shale and loose stones, up by bush and crag, by rock and watercourse, and by tracks only trodden by the goat, and I stand panting on the terrace, a few feet of peak above, a yawning precipice below. My dream was too terribly realised. There, in the rock-hewn chair, in her muslin dress and mantle of gay plaid, both of them drenched and stained with rain and earth, lay Ellen, cold and dead. Her long fair hair half-hid her pale face, and her little hands were tightly clasped together. I clasped her to my breast; I called wildly on her name; I parted the dank hair that hid her face, and on it I saw imprinted the same agony of fear, the same dark horror, as in my fatal dream. But she was dead, my dear, dear Ellen. And I think my heart must have broken then, as I saw her, for ever. Since that day the world has been a prison to me.

2em

A “MEDIUM” IN 1772:

any one remember the “Stockwell Ghost?” The world was less scientific and more gullible, perhaps, ninety years ago, than it is at present; but yet certain “surprising and unaccountable events” which it records in these days seem so suggestive of Stockwell redivivus that I have hunted up the story; from pages damp, good reader, not with the delightful dampness of your uncut serial, but with the damp of years,—all covered with yellow blotches.

The “astonishing transactions” were as follows:

On Twelfth-Day, 1772, a certain Mrs. Golding was in the parlour of her house at Stockwell when she heard a noise of falling glass and china in the kitchen, and her maid, who had been in her service but a few days, came to tell her that the stone plates were falling from the shelf.

Mrs. Golding went out, and immediately noises began to be heard all over the house; a clock fell down and was shattered, a lantern tumbled from the staircase and smashed itself, and an earthen pan started in pieces, and its contents were scattered about the floor. The noise attracted several persons to the spot, one of whom, a carpenter, gave in his opinion that the foundations of the house were giving way. Mrs. Golding ran into a neighbour’s house and fainted. When she came to herself, being still weak and faint, a surgeon was desired to bleed her, which he did—rather a questionable remedy for weakness—and the blood, in a congealed state, sprang from the basin to the floor, the basin breaking to pieces. A bottle of rum, at the same time, made shipwreck of itself. In the mean time the bystanders, for fear of the catastrophe foretold by the carpenter, were busily engaged in removing Mrs. Golding’s effects to the house in which she herself had taken refuge. It soon became evident, however, that some agent, more mysterious and horrible than a yielding foundation, was at work. A pier-glass wrenched itself from the arms of the man who carried it and fell, smashing itself. It was pushed under a sideboard, and immediately a scene of destruction began above it. Glasses, jars, cups, and bottles danced over each other and into each other in a furious manner, many of them springing to the ground in fragments. Some one being asked to take a glass of wine or spirits, both the indicated bottles flew in pieces before they could be