Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/82

70 which I had in my box, the lines kept getting more and more slanting, until the last was screwed away in a corner, because there was no room for it anywhere else. And here was just the same thing. He began straight enough, right across the page, but, long before he had reached the bottom, he was in the same old mess.

“I need no ghost to tell me that this is from my venerated uncle. I remember his beautiful neatness. Look at that, my dear, did you ever see anything like those lines for straightness?”

I held up the page for Emily to see. She actually smiled, for the first time since she had been inside that house.

“Now let’s see what the dear old creature says. Do hope it’s something comforting. What’s this?” I began to read out aloud.

“‘,—Now that you are once inside the house, you will never sleep out of it again.’ Shan’t I? We shall see. Nice prospect, upon my word. ‘You may think you will, but you won’t. The spell is on you. It will grow in power. Each night it will draw you back. At your peril do not struggle against it. Or may God have mercy on your soul.’ This is—this is better and better. My dear, Uncle Benjamin must have been very mad. ‘You are surrounded by enemies.’ Am I? I wasn’t till I had your fortune. I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t have been better off without it. ‘Out of the house you are at their mercy. They watch you night and day. When you are out, they are ever at your heels. Sooner or later they will have you. Then again may God have mercy on your soul. But in the house you are safe. I have seen to that. Do not be afraid of anything you may see or hear. There is That within these walls which holds you in the hollow of Its hand.’ That last line, my dear, is in italics. It strikes me that not only was Uncle Bennie mad, but