Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/129

Rh door. "I will win her," he repeated. "What you have seen to-night happens more rarely now. Moreover, the summer is beginning"

He paused: yet I had gathered his meaning. "There will be less peril for the ships for a while," said I.

Said he: "To them she intends no harm. It is for her master the light waves. Paschal, I am an unhappy man!" He flung a hand to his forehead, but recovering himself peered at me under the shadow of it. "If you could watch—often as you have done to-night—you might protect others from seeing"

The wisdom of this at least I saw, and gave him my promise readily. Upon this understanding (for no more could be had) I withdrew me.

The next day, therefore, I moved my bed to a turret-chamber on the angle of the south-eastern wall whence I could keep my lady's window in view. I was never a man to need much sleep: but if, through the year which followed, the apparition escaped once or twice without my cognisance, I dare take oath this was the extent of it. It appeared more rarely, as my Master had promised: and in the end (I think) scarce above once a month. In form it never varied from the cresseted globe of flame I had first seen, and always it took the path across the fields towards Cuddan Point. No sound went with it, or announced its going or return: and while it was absent, my lady's chamber would be utterly dark and silent. My