Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/289

 Why, he had that unearthly look when I saw him at the window⸺”

“That’s funny,” broke in Elizabeth, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation, but had listened with rapt attention. “That’s very funny.”

“What is?” asked Val and Jessica.

“Why, about a ghost, you know,” said the old woman. “You know, Germinal said he saw a ghost—said that graveyards were yawning and graves giving up their dead. He was as scared as I ever seen a nigger or anyone else be. He trembled like a leaf.”

“I wonder if he could have seen the same—ah—thing—that you saw,” Jessica turned to Val.

“I don’t know,” said Val, “but last night was certainly the right kind of a night to see such things, I’ll tell the world. If ever there was a stage set for the appearance of things that don’t belong with the living, there was one set last night.” He shivered involuntarily, and smiled immediately. “When I think of that old house in the dark, with the rain pounding on it like on a drum ”

He trailed off into a silence, lost in the wonder of Jessica’s eyes; he could almost feel himself falling falling  falling  into their deeps, losing his identity in them, drenched with their loveliness. He brought himself back with a jerk, just before the silence became awkward.

“But I was telling you about where the money is,” he said, coming back to the business on hand. “Do you know where Mount Monroe is?” he inquired of Jessica.

She nodded. “Why, that’s on our property—it’s not really a mountain, you know. Just a hill, about a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high, at the