THE STEPPING-STONES
Between Coalbrookdale and the Wrekin, in a charmingly wooded valley,
flows a stream crossed by seven stepping-stones, and on one bank of the
stream are the ruins of what was once a farmhouse. People shun the spot
at night, and tell strange tales of the uncanny things that are seen
there.
The following narrative may very possibly afford an explanation of the
alleged hauntings.
About noon one stifling hot day in August, rather more than thirty
years ago, Robert Redblake Casson, senior partner of the firm of
Casson, Hunter & Co., ivory merchants, of Old Queen Street, London,
walked into the Fox and Greyhound Inn, Coalbrookdale, and ordered
luncheon. While he was eating--there was no one else in the dining-room
at the time--his eyes wandered to a large oil-painting hanging on
the wall facing him. It represented a stream spanned by seven large
stepping-stones. In the background of the picture, and leading to
the bank of the stream, was a broad and very white pathway, bordered
on either side by a thickly planted row of lofty pines. The artist,
Casson thought, had depicted this scene with a more than ordinary
touch of realism. The trees were no mere paint-and-canvas duds, but
things of life--things that stood out prominently, each with an
individuality of its own. He could almost see them move, see the
rustling of their foliage and hear the creaking of their gently swaying
bodies. Their shadows, too, were no empty, meaningless daubs, such as
one too often sees in pictures, but counterparts, living, breathing
counterparts, that, while conveying a sense of the physical, conveyed
also a suggestion of the inexplicable. As to the water in the stream
which rippled and babbled as it flowed, Casson could feel the speed
and gauge the shallowness of it everywhere, saving round the centre
stepping-stone, where it was green, and seemed to possess the stillness
that great depths alone can generate. There was sunlight everywhere on
the surface of the water, and here and there it shone and sparkled with
all the brilliant lustre of the goldfishes' scales; but despite this
animation, a sense of utter loneliness, a feeling of intense isolation,
seemed to permeate the whole thing, and Casson, as he gazed, felt both
chilled and depressed.
He was still looking at the picture, and wondering what there could be
in it to cause such a sensation of chilliness, when something made him
glance at the stepping-stones, and, to his utter amazement, he saw the
centre one suddenly begin to oscillate.
Thinking it must be some kind of optical illusion, Casson rubbed his
eyes and looked again, but the stone was still shaking, and he fancied
he could discern the shadowy and indistinct outline of something or
someone standing on it, swaying violently to and fro.
The phenomenon lasted some seconds, and then very abruptly ceased.
Casson got up from the table and walked right up to the picture. He
examined it closely, and, oddly enough, although he was standing on the
floor a foot or so away from the canvas, he yet felt he was absorbed
by it, and part and parcel of the surroundings it depicted. The stone
was quite motionless now, but despite this fact, the fact that it now
lay firmly embedded in its cup-like basin, Casson was acutely conscious
that it had moved. Moreover, its present stillness was of the most
impressive nature; it was, as it were, the stillness that only comes
after great emotion. Casson looked for the name of the artist, and at
last, in one corner of the canvas, painted in sepia to tone with the
general colouring, he found the signature. It was "Ralph L. Wotherall."
"Good heavens!" he ejaculated; "this must be my old friend. There
cannot be two Ralph L. Wotheralls. Besides, I remember he used to be
fond of painting, and, judging from this specimen, he must have taken
to it professionally. How I should like to meet him again!"
His memory ran back a clear score of years. He and Wotherall had been
the staunchest of friends; they had shared a study in Dempster's
House at Harley. Wotherall was quite the best boy in the school in
drawing; indeed, it was about the only subject he was good in; and he
had often remarked to Casson that whatever his father, who was a big
timber merchant, might desire to the contrary, he meant to go to the
Slade School in London and be an artist. He decorated the walls of the
study with sketches and caricatures of the boys and masters--Casson
even now laughed as he thought of some of them--and during his last
term at the old place he had executed an oil-painting. If Casson
remembered correctly, it depicted a river (Wotherall had always evinced
a very strong fascination for water scenery), and was hung in a very
conspicuous place over the mantelpiece.
Wotherall had not been popular at Harley. He was no good at games, and
did not take the trouble to conceal his dislike of them. Besides, he
had no respect for conventions; he did not have a fag, and inveighed
hotly against those who did; he thought nothing of the "caps" and
other big-wigs, and was invariably in trouble, either with a master, a
House Sixth, or somebody of an equally recognised importance. Still,
for all that, he had been a most excellent chum, and he, Casson, had
repeatedly felt a longing to see him again, if only to chat about
the many escapades they had had together. What had become of him, he
wondered? Strange that that stone in the picture should have attracted
his attention--should have led him to look for the name of the artist,
and to discover in it his old friend! Of course the rocking of the
stone was a hallucination. Probably his sight had played him a trick or
his brain had suddenly become giddy. How could a stone in a picture--a
thing of mere paint and canvas--suddenly start rocking? The thing was
too fantastic for words, and he walked back to his seat, laughing.
Ringing the bell, he asked to see the landlord, and when the latter
appeared, he inquired of him how he had come by the picture, and if he
knew the artist.
"I bought that picture, sir," the landlord replied, "of a woman of the
name of Griffiths. I happened to be passing her house--Stepping-Stone
Farm, they call it--one day, when she was having a sale of some of her
live stock, together with a few odds and ends in the way of surplus
furniture, books, pictures, etc. I am very fond of a good landscape,
sir, particularly with a bit of water in it, and there was something
about this one that specially appealed to me. That, sir, is the stream
that flows outside the old woman's house, and it was painted, so she
informed me, by an artist who used to lodge with her, but had to leave
in the end because he was stony-broke, and hadn't the wherewithal to go
on paying the rent. A not uncommon happening with artists, sir, so I
have always been given to understand. From what I gathered he owed the
old woman pounds, and the few things he left behind him--knick-knacks
and a couple of pictures--I bought the lot--was all the compensation
she could ever get out of him."
"You don't know where he went, I suppose?" Casson said.
"No," the landlord replied, shaking his head. "Mrs. Griffiths did not
volunteer that information, and, as I was not particularly interested
in the fellow, I didn't ask her. She doesn't live very far from here,
however, and if you would like to see her, sir, you could hire a trap
and drive over, or even walk--though, maybe, you'd find walking a bit
too tiring this weather."
Casson thanked the landlord, and, feeling particularly fit and well,
decided to set off at once on foot to Stepping-Stone Farm. He had
little difficulty in finding the way, thanks to the prodigality of
the local authorities in their distribution of signposts, and the sun
had hardly begun to set, when a sudden swerve of the road showed him
an avenue of trees that he instantly identified as that depicted in
Wotherall's picture. Everywhere he encountered the same atmosphere of
intense loneliness and isolation, not untinged with a melancholy, that
had the most depressing effect, and filled his mind with a hundred and
one dismal reflections.
Advancing over the white soil he soon heard the rushing of water, and
saw, straight ahead of him and apparently barring his progress, a broad
stream, that seemed unusually full of water for the time of year. As he
drew near he perceived the stream was spanned by seven stepping-stones,
and, drawing nearer still, he saw that, just as in Wotherall's picture,
the water on either side the middle and largest of the stones formed
two big pools, one of which was singularly green and suggestive of very
great depth.
On the opposite side of the stream, almost on its very bank, a
farmyard encircled a long, low building, the walls of which were
barely visible beneath a profusion of pink and white roses, clematis
and honeysuckle. Casson thought he had never seen anything quite
so enchanting, and, being a man who invariably acted upon impulse,
decided to ask Mrs. Griffiths, whose house it undoubtedly was, to
put him up for the night. To do that, however, he would of course
have to cross the stream. Now Casson had often crossed deep rivers in
Norway by stepping-stones, and in crossing these rivers he had twice
seen a man slip and, with one agonising shriek of despair, plunge
headlong into the seething foam, his body, bruised and battered and
hardly recognisable, being found many days later, calmly floating in
some obscure nook maybe a mile or so away; and compared with these
Scandinavian rivers the stream that now faced him was but a brooklet.
All the same, he had never experienced such an intense fear and feeling
of insecurity as now, when, stepping lightly over the first three
stones, he landed on the centre one and gazed into the green, silent
depths of the largest and deepest of the two pools that lay on either
side of it. There was something curiously unnatural about this pool; he
had never seen such a pronounced green in fresh water before, and its
depth was in such marked contrast to the shallow, babbling water all
around it. As he peered into it, a dark shadow seemed to well up to its
surface, but he could trace no likeness in it to himself, and the trees
were too far off for it to be produced by any one of them. He was
asking himself how it could have come there, when his eyes wandered to
the stone on which he was standing.
What an odd shape it was, nearly round and slightly convex, like the
back of a turtle or some other queer amphibious creature, and it
moved; he was positive of that, but it did not move with the rocking,
vibrating movement he had witnessed in the picture; it moved with a
furtive, sidelong, crawling action, as if it were alive. The sensation
was unendurable. He turned to go, and, as he leaped through the air to
the fourth stone, something whose attitude towards him he could not
exactly define seemed to rise out of the green pool with astonishing
celerity and leap with him. Arriving on the seventh and last stone,
he was conscious of a strong restraining influence, an enigmatical
something that seemed to be trying to pull him back, and it was only
by exerting every atom of his will power that he succeeded in forcing
himself forward. However, the moment his feet touched the bank and
he was quite clear of the water, he was himself again. He turned and
looked at the stone. It was absolutely motionless, while a stray
sunbeam, gilding the surface of the silent pool, made it appear quite
ridiculously cheerful. Vexed with himself for being such a fool, Casson
now crossed the farmyard and, going up to the house, knocked at the
door. It was opened by a middle-aged woman, who might once have been
the village belle, but who was now thin and worn.
"Yes," she said, running her eyes carefully over Casson's face and
clothes. "What is it?"
"Are you Mrs. Griffiths?" Casson ejaculated. "I am a friend of Mr.
Wotherall. I understand he once boarded with you."
"That's right," the woman replied. "He lived with me more than six
months, and left two years ago last May. He didn't owe you anything,
did he?"
"Oh no," Casson replied quickly; "far from it. He and I were old
schoolfellows. I saw a picture of his at the place I lunched at to-day,
and, hearing he had been in the neighbourhood, I thought I would like
to find out his present whereabouts."
"If you've come to inquire of me, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed,"
Mrs. Griffiths responded, "for I've neither seen him nor heard from him
since he went away, and he would not leave any address for letters to
be forwarded, as he said he had written to all his friends to tell them
not to write here any more. A good many bills, but nothing else, came
for him after he left, and those I have returned to the Dead Letter
Office. He was very hard up, poor gentleman, and it's my opinion he
didn't want his creditors to know what had become of him."
"I suppose he must have lost money then," Casson murmured, "for I
always understood that his people were very comfortably fixed, and that
he was an only child. Poor old Wotherall, I should so like to have met
him again! Do you still let rooms?"
"Yes, sir," Mrs. Griffiths replied; "a top bedroom and parlour. The
same two as Mr. Wotherall had. The last people that occupied them, a
commercial traveller and his wife from Leeds, only left last week.
Would you like to see them?"
Casson acquiesced, and, liking the look of the rooms immensely, took
them for a fortnight, which was all that remained of his seven weeks'
holidays.
"It is a charming spot," he argued, "and I can easily amuse myself
mooching about the fields or lying by the stream reading. Rest and
quiet, and a plain, wholesome diet, such as one always gets at a farm,
are just the very things I need."
He had a gorgeous tea that evening--strawberries, freshly gathered from
the garden, cream, delicious butter and bread, none of that mysterious
substitute that is palmed off on one nowadays in most of the London
hotels and restaurants, but real home-made bread, which tasted far
nicer than anything he had ever eaten in Bond Street or Piccadilly--and
he enjoyed the meal so much, in fact, that he felt in a particularly
amiable frame of mind, and thoroughly well satisfied with the world in
general.
Presently he got up, intending to go out. He crossed the stone-flagged
hall, and, passing the kitchen, the door of which was slightly open,
he perceived Mrs. Griffiths busily engaged at a pastry-board rolling
away as if for dear life. Wishing to be sociable, he called out, and
as soon as she invited him in, opened up a conversation with her,
inquiring how many cows she kept, how much land she rented, and had
she a good crop of fruit. Whilst she was answering these questions,
expatiating to no small degree on the trials and drawbacks of having to
run a farm without a husband to look after it (she had, she remarked,
with much emphasis and a dangerous approach to tears, been married
twice, her first husband, "the best man as ever breathed," dying of
consumption, and her second, a drunkard and a bad lot in every way,
deserting her and going off to America, so she had always believed,
with some other woman); whilst, I say, she was engaged telling him all
this, he suddenly found himself gazing at an object hanging on the wall
near the grandfather clock. It was a striped chocolate, white, and blue
scarf, with the letters H.C. in white standing out in bold relief. He
recognised the colours at once; they were the colours of Dempster's
House at Harley. Evidently Wotherall had left the scarf behind as part
of the personal effects that he had had to hand over to Mrs. Griffiths,
in order to appease her indignation at his failure to produce the rent.
Poor beggar, he must indeed have been hard pushed to part with so
sacred a memento of his early life. Casson, like every other Harleyan,
had the greatest reverence and affection for everything associated with
the old School, the mere thought of which even now sent a thrill of
genuine emotion through him.
"I see you have got a souvenir of my friend over there," he said,
pointing to the scarf. "I suppose he made you a present of it when he
left."
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Griffiths demanded, abruptly breaking off from
her pastry-making "A souvenir of your friend? I don't understand."
"I mean that scarf hanging on the wall there," Casson cried, again
indicating with his hand its whereabouts. "It's my old School, or
rather House, scarf. But what makes it blow about so? There doesn't
seem to be any wind."
"House! scarf! colours!" Mrs. Griffiths ejaculated. "I never heard tell
of such things. You must be crazy. There's nothing on the wall saving
that almanac that was given me by the grocer over in Coalbrookdale for
a Christmas present. Have you never seen an almanac before?"
"Not made of wool and behaving like that," Casson remarked. Then, going
a few steps nearer, he gave vent to a loud exclamation of surprise.
There was no scarf there at all, not the vestige of one, only a
picture almanac representing an intensely silly-looking girl holding a
lawn-tennis racket.
"My liver must be very wrong and I must be more than ordinarily
bilious," Casson said. "I could have sworn it was a scarf."
"You're run down; been working too hard, Mr. Casson," Mrs. Griffiths
observed. "What you want is a rest. Go to bed early, and don't try your
eyes over books and letter-writing."
Casson thanked her for her advice and, turning on his heels, left the
kitchen. For one brief second he paused to look back. Mrs. Griffiths
was staring after him, and in the depths of her large china-blue eyes,
the pupils of which seemed to have grown to an unusual size, he read
an expression of curiosity intermingled with fear.
The next few hours Casson spent lying on the grassy bank of the stream.
There was something wonderfully soothing in the constant rustling of
the leaves of the big trees in the avenue, and the eternal babble,
babble, babble of the water. At times he construed the sounds into
real sighings and whisperings, and fancied he could hear his name
called, "Casson! Casson! Casson!" very softly and plaintively, but
occasionally with such reality that he started, and had to reassure
himself earnestly that it was all imagination. Then the shadows on the
white soil of the avenue riveted his attention. That they were only
the shadows of the trees he had no doubt, and yet he queried every now
and then if he had ever before seen shadows flit about and contort
themselves in quite such an incomprehensible manner. The emptiness of
the avenue, too, seemed so emphasised. Why was it so deserted? Why
weren't there people about--living beings among those dark swaying
trees and bushes like there were in the London parks? He did not know
if he altogether liked the avenue now, when twilight was coming on. His
eyes had tricked him in the kitchen; might they not trick him again
out here, and in a rather more alarming manner? He would not look at
the avenue again, not till it was broad daylight; he would turn his
attention to something else. And then, of course, his eyes rested on
the stepping-stones. One, two, three, four, he counted. There was that
confounded queer-shaped middle stone again, and that pool! How black
and sinister they both looked in the semi-darkness! He would sound the
pool in the morning and see if it was really as deep as he fancied. He
turned away his eyes and tried to keep his attention concentrated on
something else, but it was never any good, and in the end he invariably
caught himself gazing at the stones, and particularly at the middle
one. At last, tearing himself away with an effort, he went indoors and
had supper, and at ten o'clock by his watch wended his way upstairs
to bed. Just outside his door he suddenly pulled himself up sharply.
Another step, and he felt he would have collided with something or
somebody, and yet, when he looked there was nothing--nothing save
space. More convinced than ever now that there was something wrong
either with the place or himself, Casson entered his room and proceeded
to get into bed. The exertions of the day had made him tired, and he
was soon asleep. He supposed he slept for about three hours, for he
awoke with a start to hear the kitchen clock hurriedly strike two.
His heart was beating furiously, and he had the most uncomfortable
feeling that there was someone besides himself in the room. He fought
against this feeling for some time, until, at last, unable to endure it
any longer, he got out of bed, lit the candle, and searched the room
thoroughly. The door was locked on the inside--he remembered locking
it--and he was quite alone. "It must be nerves," he said, getting back
into bed and blowing out the light. "A strong tonic is what I want.
I will write to Dr. Joyce for one to-morrow. But I've never been
afflicted with nerves before! And in all consciousness I live simply
enough; so I don't know why I should suddenly develop biliousness."
Then seized with a sudden desire to blow his nose, and recollecting
that his handkerchief was on the chair by the bedside, he was putting
out his hand to grope for it, when he felt it quietly thrust into his
palm.
After that he pulled the bedclothes tightly over his head and kept them
there till the morning. With the sunlight all doubts and uneasiness
vanished, and Casson got out of bed fully convinced that all his
experiences of the previous night were due to mere nervousness.
"I'm a Londoner," he argued, "and, not being used to the quiet and
loneliness of these out-of-the-way places, I got the wind up."
Breakfast made him even more confident, and he went out into the yard
in the cheeriest mood possible. After amusing himself watching the
poultry, pigs, and other animals, he wandered through a wicket-gate
into a field, and then through another field down to the stream. While
he was threading his way back to the farm, through a mass of gorse
and other undergrowth, he came upon a boy bending over a fishing-rod,
busily intent on putting something red and raw--like uncooked meat--on
a hook. "Whatever's that horrid-looking stuff," Casson said. "You'll
never catch fish with bait like that. Why don't you use dough?"
"'Cos I know they like this best," was the answer, and the boy looked
up at Casson and grinned.
Casson was now so taken up with the boy's appearance that he forgot
all about the bait. He had never seen such an unpleasant, queer,
malshapen face before. The cranium was disproportionately large; the
forehead and sides of the head immediately above and behind the ears
were enormously developed; the chin was small and retreating; the ears,
which stood very pronouncedly out from the head, were very big and
pointed; the mouth huge; the eyes big, dark, and very heavily lidded;
the skin yellow and unhealthy. The face was unprepossessing enough in
repose, but when the lips opened and it smiled, the likeness to some
ghoulish, froggish, and wholly monstrous kind of animal was increased a
hundredfold, and Casson started back in dismay.
"Who are you?" he demanded, "and what right have you to fish here?"
"I like that--I do," the boy grunted. "Why, I've every right. I'm
Ephraim Owen Lloyd. My mother, her you're staying with, was Mrs. Owen
Lloyd before she married again and took the name of Griffiths. No right
to fish here! You tell my mother that and see what she says." And,
grinning wider than ever, he picked up the baited hook and flung it far
into the stream.
Not wishing to have any further conversation with him, and feeling
thoroughly disgusted and repelled, Casson walked on towards the stones.
"Fancy being under the same roof with a young degenerate like that!"
he said to himself. "I wish now I hadn't decided to stay so long."
Slashing at the grass and other herbage with his stick--a trick Casson
always resorted to when unsettled or annoyed--he reached the stones,
and was about to turn into the yard when he received something of a
surprise. A man in flannels, with a chocolate, white, and blue striped
blazer, passed him by and, crossing the yard, vanished round an angle
of the house. Casson did not see his face, but the back of his head,
his figure, and walk at once recalled Wotherall. "If that's not Ralph,"
Casson exclaimed, "I'll eat my hat! I wonder why he's come back? It
will give him a bit of a surprise when he sees me."
At the front door he ran into Mrs. Griffiths, who, with an apron full
of French beans, was making for the kitchen.
"Have you seen him?" Casson inquired.
"Seen who?" Mrs. Griffiths rejoined.
"The man in the blazer, of course," Casson replied. "Mr. Wotherall,
wasn't it?"
"Mr. Wotherall!" Mrs. Griffiths exclaimed, stopping short and staring
hard at Casson. "You seem to have got Mr. Wotherall on the brain. Mr.
Wotherall is nowhere near here--leastways, if he is, I've seen no signs
of him."
"Why, there he is!" Casson cried excitedly, pointing at a window,
through which he saw a figure in the familiar Harleyan House blazer
saunter slowly by. "That is Wotherall. He hasn't altered in the least.
See, he's looking straight in here--at me! I'll go and speak to him!"
He ran to the door and threw it open. To his astonishment, there was no
one there but young Ephraim Lloyd, who met his puzzled expression with
an impudent leer.
"Where's Mr. Wotherall?" Casson cried. "What's become of him?"
The boy's countenance instantly underwent a change. "Mr. Wotherall!" he
stammered. "What do you know of Mr. Wotherall?"
"Know of him?" Casson retorted angrily. "That's my business. He was
here a few seconds ago, and now I can see no trace of him. Where is he,
I say?"
By this time Mrs. Griffiths had deposited the beans on the kitchen
table and joined the two at the door. "Take no notice of the
gentleman," she said to Ephraim, "it's overwork. Been a-studying too
hard. I've told him he must throw aside his books and letter-writing
while he is here, and rest."
"Do you mean to tell me," Casson said "that neither of you saw a man in
a blazer pass here just now?"
"Naw!" Ephraim drawled. "I ain't seen no one. There's no man in a
blazer or in any other kind of thing anywhere about here. There's no
man at all except yourself."
"That's right!" Mrs. Griffiths chipped in. "I told the gentleman so,
only he won't believe me."
"I must have been dreaming, then," Casson replied reluctantly; "but, at
all events, I am awake now, and should like my dinner, Mrs. Griffiths,
as soon as you can get it."
That ended the incident. Casson retreated to his parlour, and the other
two, after mumbling for awhile in the hall, retired together to the
kitchen. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and, once again,
Casson found himself, candle in hand, wending his way upstairs to bed.
Just outside his door the same thing happened as on the previous night.
He thought he saw someone standing there, and pulled himself up sharply
to avoid a collision.
Once inside his room he locked the door, and then looked everywhere
to make sure no one was hiding. That preliminary over, he stood for
a while by the window smoking, then undressed, and got into bed.
Leaning on his elbow, he was about to blow out the candle, which was
on the chair by his side, when there was a big puff and it was blown
out for him. No thought of investigating this time entered Casson's
mind; he dived deep under the bedclothes, and did not emerge till Mrs.
Griffiths, almost thumping his door down, announced that his breakfast
was on the table getting cold. After breakfast he went for a ramble in
the fields, and as he had no desire to come in contact with Ephraim,
towards whom he had taken a most violent dislike, he headed in a
direction away from the stream. He had not gone many yards, however,
when he heard a cat screaming as if in fearful pain. Thinking some dog
had got hold of it and was worrying it to death, and being very fond of
cats, Casson at once made for the sounds, and in an open space, within
a few yards of the stream, came upon a spectacle that he felt he could
never forget, even if he lived a thousand years.
Tied down securely with cord to the top of a big wooden box was a black
and white cat. Ephraim had hooked out one of its eyes, which was on the
ground near his fishing-line, and was now about to hook out the other.
The mystery of the bait Casson had seen him using the day before was
thus explained.
With something like a howl of fury Casson rushed at Ephraim, and,
seizing him by the scruff of his neck, thrashed him until his arms
ached. Then flinging him on the ground with the remark, "You little
devil, I hope I've killed you," he untied the cat. Weak with pain and
loss of blood, the wretched animal had not the strength to move, and
Casson, lifting it tenderly up, carried it to the house. Going straight
into the kitchen, he showed it to Mrs. Griffiths.
"This is your son's work," he said. "I'm going to show it to the police
at once, and I only hope he'll get a thorough good birching."
Mrs. Griffiths ceased what she was doing and looked at Casson defiantly.
"What do you want to interfere with Ephraim for?" she remarked. "He
ain't done nothing to you, has he?"
"He's done nothing to me, perhaps," Casson retorted, "but he's done
something to this cat. You can see for yourself."
"Well, he's only a boy," Mrs. Griffiths responded; "and if he has
ill-treated the cat, there's not much harm done. I expect it's the same
cat that has been after the chickens. The cats about here are a perfect
pest."
"That's no excuse for hooking their eyes out," Casson said hotly. "I
intend leaving at once. Here's a week's rent," and, taking some money
from his pocket, he deposited it on the table.
At that moment there were sounds of steps on the gravel outside, loud
hullabalooings, and Ephraim burst into the kitchen.
"The gentleman's been hitting me," he bellowed. "He struck me on the
head and boxed my ears."
"You struck him!" Mrs. Griffiths screamed, her cheeks white with fury.
"You dared to strike him! I'll have the law on you, see if I don't.
There, there, Ephraim, cease crying, and you shall have what is left of
that custard pudding you liked so much yesterday."
This bribe apparently taking effect, Mrs. Griffiths gave her offspring
a final cuddle, and then veered round with the intention of renewing an
attack upon Casson. Before she could open her mouth to speak, however,
there was another howling on the part of Ephraim, and Casson, under
cover of it hurried off to his bedroom to collect his things. As he
went upstairs, both the boy and his mother showered abuses on him, and
he thought he heard Ephraim say something to the effect that he wished
they could serve him as they had served someone else--the name of the
someone else being drowned in a loud hush from Mrs. Griffiths, who
afterwards began to speak very excitedly in Welsh.
On reaching his room Casson sought to revive the cat. He gave it some
brandy from his flask, but the animal had been so badly mauled that
all his efforts were in vain, and in a very few minutes it succumbed.
He was thinking how he should carry it to the police station, when he
heard a growl, and, looking round, saw a big black retriever dog, with
a bright steel collar, standing on its hind legs, with its back towards
him, gazing out of the window. Wondering whose dog it was, and what it
was growling at, Casson went to the window, and, looking out, saw Mrs.
Griffiths and the boy, each armed with a long pole, making off in the
direction of the stream. Once or twice they peeped round, (whereupon
Casson quickly hid himself behind the curtain), and then, apparently
satisfied that they had not been seen, kept on following the course
of the stream till they arrived at the stepping-stones. Crossing the
first two, they stood on the third, and, thrusting the tops of their
poles under the middle one, began to lever it up. Casson now thought
it high time to depart. He felt convinced that they were setting some
kind of trap for him, and that the exact nature of it was only known
to themselves. Thanking his lucky stars that he had happened to look
out of the window in time to see their little game, and determining
to escape at once, avoiding the stepping-stones at all costs, he was
preparing to leave the room, when he suddenly thought of the dog.
It was nowhere to be seen, and the door and the window were both
shut. Where could it be? He looked under the bed, in the cupboard,
everywhere; it was useless--the dog had vanished!
"The sooner I am out of this house," he muttered, as he ran downstairs
and out at the kitchen door, "the better." And taking care, as he
crossed the yard, to keep well out of sight of the stepping-stones, he
ran in an opposite direction, without stopping for at least a mile.
Eventually he crossed the stream by a bridge, and found his way to a
village, from whence he was able to proceed by train to Coalbrookdale.
Arriving at the latter place, he went at once to the police, and
telling them first of all about the cat, went on to narrate all that
had happened to him at the farm. The police were not altogether
unsympathetic; they could, however, so they said, do nothing with
regard to the cat without corroborative evidence, and, as to the
other matter, they were afraid the law did not take cognizance of
the superphysical, or suspicion founded on anything so immaterial as
ghosts, although they themselves would not like to go as far as to deny
their existence altogether. At length, being unable to prevail upon the
police to do anything, Casson, by offering a handsome remuneration,
persuaded two labourers to accompany him back to the stream. Arriving
at the stepping-stones, they cautiously examined the middle one, and
found it to be so poised that anyone standing on it would, by its
unexpected tilt, suddenly be precipitated into a deep hole directly
underneath it.
After considerable difficulty the stone was sufficiently moved on one
side to enable the workmen to explore this hole, and at the bottom of
it the skeletons of two men and a dog were discovered.
There was nothing on the one skeleton that could in any way help to
identify it; but remnants of clothes, ragged and rotten, still adhered
to the other, and from the name engraven on a card-case in the pocket
of the coat, which tallied with the initials on the undergarments and a
signet ring, there was little doubt but that the remains were those of
Ralph Wotherall. [From subsequent inquiries it was ascertained that the
friends and relatives of Ralph Wotherall had heard from him immediately
prior to the time he was supposed to have left Stepping-Stone Farm,
but had not heard from him since, a fact to which they had attributed
little importance, as Wotherall, on more than one occasion, had
suddenly decided to go abroad, where he had stayed for a couple of
years or so without letting anyone know where he was or what he was
doing. The story, they said, of his being so hard up as to be unable to
pay the rent could be discredited by his solicitors, who would testify
to the fact that they had but recently invested a large sum of money
for him, from which he was deriving a not inconsiderable income.] A
steel collar bearing the initials R. L. W. was found round the neck
of the third skeleton, and as several people remembered having seen a
big black retriever with Wotherall while he was staying at the farm,
it was pretty certain that the canine remains were those of his dog.
However, Mrs. Griffiths, who appeared to be quite as astonished as
anyone at the discovery of the skeletons, still stuck to her original
story that Wotherall had left the neighbourhood, taking his dog with
him, and against her statements Casson could only reiterate his
surmises. He was quite certain that Mrs. Griffiths and her evil-faced
son were guilty of murder, that, having done away with Wotherall and
some other man by means of the stepping-stone, they had deliberately
set the same deathtrap for him, and that he had only been saved from
falling into it by the apparition of his old friend's dog; but he could
not, of course, expect the police to work up a case, which, from their
point of view, rested upon such an unsubstantial foundation, and as on
examination the skeleton showed no evidence of foul play, there was no
alternative, the usual verdict of "Death from misadventure" had to be
returned.