Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/127

119 It went by, and I followed it at something above walking pace until upon the very verge of the head-land, where I had no will to risk my neck, it halted and began to be heaved up and down much like the poop-light of a vessel at sea. In this play it continued for an hour at least; then it came steadily back towards me by the way it had gone, and as it came I ran upon it with my dagger. But it slipped by me, travelling at speed towards the mainland; whither I pelted after it hot-foot, and so across the fields towards Pengersick. Strain as I might, I could not overtake it; yet contrived to keep it within view, and so well that I was bare a hundred yards behind when it came under the black shadow of the castle and without pause glided across the dry moat and so up the face of the wall to my lady's window, which there overhung. And into this window it passed before my very eyes and vanished.

I know not what emboldened me, but from the porter's lodge I went straight up to my Master's chamber, where (though the hour must have been two in the morning or thereabouts) a light was yet burning. Also—but this had become ordinary—a smell of burning gums and herbs filled the passage leading to his door. He opened to my knock, and stood before me in his dressing-gown of sables—a tall figure of a man and youthful, though already beginning to stoop. Over his shoulder I perceived the room swimming with coils of smoke which floated in their wreaths from a brazier hard by the fireplace.