the only man in the world, so complete was the solitude through which he
was passing. He was going over to attend the wedding of his best friend,
and was, in fact, to act as the groomsman. Business had delayed him, and
he was compelled to make his journey at night. But he hadn’t gone far
before he began to feel the exhilaration of the skater. His skates were
keen, his legs fit for a longer journey than the one he had undertaken,
and the tang of the frost was to him what a spur is to a spirited horse.
He cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water. He could feel
the tumult of the air as he cleft it. As he went on he began to have
fancies. It seemed to him that he was enormously tall--a great Viking of
the Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love. That reminded him
that he had a love--though, indeed, that thought was always present with
him as a background for other thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her
she was his love, because he had only seen her a few times and the
opportunity had not presented itself. She lived at Echo Bay, too, and
was to be the maid of honor to his friend’s bride--which was another
reason why he skated on almost as swiftly as the wind, and why, now and
then, he let out a shout of exhilaration.
The one drawback in the matter was that Marie Beaujeu’s father had
money, and that Marie lived in a fine house and wore otter skin about
her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went
sledding, and that the jacket in which she kept a bit of her dead
mother’s hair had a black pearl in it as big as a pea. These things
made it difficult--nay, impossible--for Ralph Hagadorn to say anything
more than “I love you.” But that much he meant to have the satisfaction
of saying, no matter what came of it.
With this determination growing upon him he swept along the ice which
gleamed under the starlight. Indeed, Venus made a glowing path toward
the west and seemed to reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down
that avenue of light from the love star, but he was forced to turn his
back upon it and face toward the northeast.
It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were a
good deal frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, and at first
he thought it an illusion. But he rubbed his eyes hard and at length
made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in
fluttering garments who sped over the snows fast as ever werewolf went.
He called aloud, but there was no answer, and then he gave chase,
setting his teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm young muscles.
But however fast he might go the white skater went faster. After a time
he became convinced, as he chanced to glance for a second at the North
Star, that the white skater was leading him out of his direct path. For
a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should not keep to his road, but
the strange companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and so he
followed.
Of course it came to him more than once that this might be no earthly
guide. Up in those latitudes men see strange things when the hoar frost
is on the earth. Hagadorn’s father, who lived up there with the Lake
Superior Indians and worked in the copper mines, had once welcomed a
woman at his hut on a bitter night who was gone by morning, and who left
wolf tracks in the snow--yes, it was so, and John Fontanelle, the
half-breed, could tell you about it any day--if he were alive. (Alack,
the snow where the wolf tracks were is melted now!)
Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice
flushed red at dawn and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold
heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at his destination. Then, as he
took off his skates while the sun climbed arrogantly up to his place
above all other things, Hagadorn chanced to glance lakeward, and he saw
there was a great wind-rift in the ice and that the waves showed blue as
sapphires beside the gleaming ice. Had he swept along his intended path,
watching the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body
at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold
grave. The white skater had been his guardian angel!
Much impressed, he went up to his friend’s house, expecting to find
there the pleasant wedding furore. But someone met him quietly at the
door, and his friend came downstairs to greet him with a solemn
demeanor.
“Is this your wedding face?” cried Hagadorn. “Why, really, if this is
the way you are affected, the sooner I take warning the better.”
“There’s no wedding to-day,” said his friend.
“No wedding? Why, you’re not----”
“Marie Beaujeu died last night----”
“Marie----”
“Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came
home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it
somehow. She got worse and worse and talked all the time of you.”
“Of me?”
“We wondered what it all meant. We didn’t know you were lovers.”
“I didn’t know it myself; more’s the pity.”
“She said you were on the ice. She said you didn’t know about the big
breaking up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore. Then she
cried that you could come in by the old French Creek if you only
knew----?”
“I came in that way,” interrupted Hagadorn.
“How did you come to do that? It’s out of your way.”
So Hagadorn told him how it came to pass.
And that day they watched beside the maiden, who had tapers at her head
and feet, and over in the little church the bride who might have been at
her wedding said prayers for her friend. Then they buried her in her
bridesmaid’s white, and Hagadorn was there before the altar with her, as
he intended from the first. At midnight the day of the burial her
friends were married in the gloom of the cold church, and they walked
together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths on her grave.
Three nights later Hagadorn started back again to his home. They wanted
him to go by sunlight, but he had his way and went when Venus made her
bright path on the ice. He hoped for the companionship of the white
skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The
only voice he heard was the baying of a wolf on the north shore. The
world was as white as if it had just been created and the sun had not
yet colored nor man defiled it.
HOW HE CAUGHT THE GHOST.
“Yes, the house is a good one,” said the agent; “it’s in a good
neighborhood, and you’re getting it at almost nothing; but I think it
right to tell you all about it. You are orphans, you say, and with a
mother dependent on you? That makes it all the more necessary that you
should know. The fact is, the house is said to be haunted----”
The agent could not help smiling as he said it, and he was relieved to
see an answering smile on the two faces before him.
“Ah, you don’t believe in ghosts,” he went on; “nor do I, for that
matter; but, somehow, the reputation of the house keeps me from having a
tenant long at a time. The place ought to rent for twice as much as it
does.”
“If we succeed in driving out the ghost, you will not raise the rent?”
asked the boy, with a merry twinkle in his eyes.
“Well, no--not this year, at any rate,” laughed the agent. And so the
house was rented; and the slip of a girl and the tall lad, her brother,
went their way.
Within a week the family had moved into the house, and were delighted
with it. It was large and cool, with wide halls and fine stairways, and
with more room than they needed. But that did not matter in the least,
for they had always been cramped in small houses, suffering many
discomforts; and they never could have afforded such a place as this if
it had not been “haunted.”
“Blessings on the ghost!” cried Margaret, gaily, as she ran about as
merry as a child. “Who would be without a ghost in the house, when it
brings one like this?”
“And it is so near your school,” said the mother; “and I used to worry
so over the long walk; and David can come home to lunch now, and you
don’t know what a pleasure that will be.”
“It seems to me,” David gravely explained, “that if I should meet the
ghost I would treat him with the greatest politeness and encourage him
to stay. We shall not miss the room he takes, shall we? I think it would
be well to set aside that room over yours, Maggie, for his ghostship’s
own, for we shall not need that, you know. Besides, the door doesn’t
shut, and he can go in and out without breaking the lock.”
And then they all laughed and had a great deal of fun over the ghost,
which was a great joke to them.
They were very tired that night and slept soundly all night long. When
they met the next morning there was more laughter about the ghost which
was shy about meeting strangers, probably, and had made no effort to
introduce himself. For the next three days they were all hard at work,
trying to bring chaos into something like order; and then it was time
for the school to open, and Margaret was to begin teaching, and David
inserted an advertisement in the city papers for a maid-of-all-work, who
might help their mother in their absence.
For one whole day prospective colored servants presented themselves and
announced:
“Is dis de house whar dey wants a worklady? No, ma’am, I ain’ gwine to
work in dis house. Ketch me workin’ in no ha’nted house.”
After which they each and all departed, and others came in their stead.
One was secured after a while, but no sooner had she talked across the
fence with a neighbor’s servant than she, too, departed.
“Never mind, children,” said Mrs. Craig, wearily, “I would much rather
do the work than be troubled in this way.”
So the maid-of-all-work was dismissed and the Craig family locked the
doors and went to their rooms, worn out with the day’s anxieties.
They had been in the house four days, and there had been neither sight
nor sound of the ghost. The very mention of it was enough to start them
all to laughing, for they were thoroughly practical people, with a
fondness for inquiring into anything that seemed mysterious to them and
for understanding it thoroughly before they let it go.
David was soon sleeping the sound sleep of healthy boyhood, and all was
silent in the house, when Margaret stole softly into his room and laid
her hand on his arm. He was not easy to waken, and several minutes had
passed before he sat up in bed with an articulate murmur of surprise.
“Hush!” said Margaret, in a whisper, with her hand on his lips. “I want
you to come into my room and listen to a sound that I have been hearing
for some time.”
“Doors creaking,” suggested David, as he began to dress.
“Nothing of the kind,” was all she said.
They walked up the stairway, and along the upper hall to the door of the
unused room. Something was wrong with the lock and the door would not
stay fastened, as I have said.
Something that was not fear thrilled their hearts as they pushed the
door further ajar, and stood where they could see every foot of the
vacant floor. One of their own boxes stood in the middle of the room,
but aside from that, nothing was to be seen, and they looked at one
another in silence.
“Hold the lamp a minute, Maggie,” David said, at last, and then he went
all over the room, and looked more particularly at its emptiness, and
even felt the walls.
“Secret panels, you know,” he said, with a smile, but it was a very
puzzled smile indeed.
“I can’t see what it could have been,” Margaret said, as they went down
the stairs.
“No, I can’t see, either, but I’m going to see,” said David. “That was a
chain, and chains don’t drag around by themselves, you know. A ghost
could not drag a chain, if he were to try.”
“The conventional ghost very often drags chains,” said Margaret, as she
closed the door of her room.
And then she lay awake all night and listened for the conventional ghost
that dragged a chain, but it seemed that the weight of the chain must
have wearied him, for he was not heard again.
The mother had slept through it all, and next morning they gave her a
vivid account of the night’s adventure.
“Perhaps it was someone in the house,” she said, in alarm. There were no
ghosts within the bounds of possibility, so far as she was concerned,
but burglars were very possible, indeed.
Then Margaret and David both laughed more than ever.
“What fun it would be,” said David, “for a burglar to get into this
house and try to find something worth carrying away!”
So they went on to the next night, all three fully determined to spend
the night in listening for the ghost, and running him to earth if
possible.
But it was Margaret that heard the ghost, after all. She had been
sleeping and was suddenly startled wide awake, and there, overhead, was
the sound of the chain dragging; and just as she was on the point of
springing out of bed to call her brother, the chain seemed to go out of
the upper room. She lay still and listened, and in a moment she heard it
again.
It was coming down the stairs.
There was no carpet on the stairs, and she could hear the chain drop
from step to step, until it had come the whole way down. There it was,
almost at the door of her room, and something that was strangely like
fear kept her lying still, listening in horrified silence.
Then it went along the hall, dragging close to the door; and then
further away; and back and forth for awhile; and then it began dragging
back up the stairs again. Step by step she could hear it drawn over the
edge of every step--and by the time it had reached the top she
remembered herself and called David.
Again did the brother and sister make a tour of the upper room, with the
lamp. Not only that, but they looked into every nook and corner of the
upper part of the house, and at last came back, baffled. They had seen
nothing extraordinary, and they had not heard a sound.
“I’m going to see that ghost to-night,” David said to his sister the
next evening.
“How?”
“I’m going to sit up all night at the head of the stairs. Don’t say
anything about it to mother; it might make her uneasy.”
So, after the household were all quiet, David slipped into his place at
the head of the stairs, and sat down to his vigil. He had placed a
screen at the head of the stairway so that it hid him from view--as if a
ghost cared for a screen--and he established himself behind it, and
prepared to be as patient as he could.
It seemed to him that hours so long had never been devised as those the
town clocks tolled off that night. He bore it until midnight moderately
well, because, he argued with himself, if there were any ghosts about
they would surely walk then; but they were not in a humor for walking;
and still the hours rolled on without any developments. He took the
fidgets, and had nervous twitches all over him, and at last he could
endure it no longer, and had leaned his head back against the wall and
was going blissfully to sleep when----
He heard a chain dragging just beyond the open door of that unused room.
In spite of himself a shiver ran down his back. There was no mistaking
it; it was a real chain, if he had ever heard one. More than that, it
had left the room, and was coming straight towards the stairs. The hall
was dark, and it was impossible for him to see anything, although he
strained his eyes in the direction of the sound. And even while he
looked it had passed behind the screen, and was going down the stairs,
dropping from step to step with a clank.
Half way down a narrow strip of moonlight from a stair-window lay
directly across the steps. Whatever the thing was, it must pass through
that patch of light, and David leaned forward and watched.
Down it went from step to step, and presently it had slipped through the
light, and was down; and a little later it came back again, through the
light, and up the stairs, and back into that unused room.
And then David slapped his knees jubilantly, and ran down to his room,
and slept all the rest of the night.
Next morning he was very mysterious about his discoveries of the night
before.
“Oh, yes, I saw the ghost,” he said to Maggie. “There; don’t ask so many
questions; I’ll tell you more about it to-morrow, maybe.”
And that was all the information she could get from him. It was very
provoking.
That day David made a purchase down town and brought home a bulky
bundle, which he hid in his own room and would not let his sister even
peep at.
“I’m going to try to catch a ghost to-night,” he said, “and you know how
it is; if I brag too much beforehand, I shall be sure to fail.”
He was working with something in the hall after the others had retired;
but he did not sit up this time. He went to bed, and Margaret listened
at his door and found that he was soon asleep.
But away in the night they were all awakened by a squealing that brought
them all into the hall in a great hurry; and there, at the head of the
stairs, they found the huge rat-trap that David had set a few hours
before, and in the midst of the toils was a rat.
“Why, David,” exclaimed the mother, “I didn’t know that there was a rat
in the house.”
And then, all at once, she saw that there was a long chain hanging from
a little iron collar around the creature’s neck, and she and Margaret
cried together.
“And this was the ghost!”
Such a funny ghost when they came to think of it--this poor rat, with a
nest in some hole of the broken chimney. He had been someone’s pet,
once, perhaps; and now, the households he had broken up, the nights he
had disturbed, the wild sensations he had created--it made his captors
laugh to think that this innocent creature had been the cause of the
whole trouble.
“I’ll get a cage for him, and take care of him for the rest of his
life,” said David. “We owe him so much that we can’t afford to be
ungrateful.”
The next morning he took the ghost-in-a-cage and showed it to the agent,
and gave him a vivid account of the capture.
“So, you have a good house for about half price, all on account of that
rat,” exclaimed the agent, grimly. “Young man--but never mind, you
deserve it. What are you working for now? Six dollars a week? If you
ever want to change your place--suppose you come around here. I think
you need a business that will give you a chance to grow.”
And the agent and David shook hands warmly over the cage of the
“ghost.”
GRAND-DAME’S GHOST STORY.
BY C. D.
I don’t know whether you ever tell your children ghost stories or not;
some mothers don’t, but our mother, though of German descent, was
strong-minded on the ghost subject, and early taught all of her children
to be fearless mentally as well as physically, and, though dearly fond
of hearing ghost stories, especially if they were real true ghosts, we
were sadly skeptical as to their being anything of the kind that could
harm. We were quite learned in ghostly lore, knew all about
“doppeigangers,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “blue lights,” etc., and we could
not have a greater treat for good behavior than for our mother to draw
on her store of supernatural tales for our entertainment. The story I am
about to relate she told us one stormy night, when, gathered round her
chair in her own cozy sanctum, before a cheerful fire, we ate nuts and
apples, and listened while she recited “an o’er true tale,” told her by
her grandmother, who herself witnessed the vision:
It was a fearful night, the wind sobbed and wailed round the house like
lost spirits mourning their doom; the rain beat upon the casements, and
the trees, writhing in the torture of the fierce blast, groaned and
swayed until their tops almost swept the earth; bright flashes of
lightning pierced even through the closed shutters and heavy curtains,
and the thunder had a sullen, threatening roar that made your blood
creep. It was a night to make one seek to shut out all sound, draw the
curtains close, stir the fire and nestle deep in the arm-chair before
it, with feet upon the fender, and have something cheerful to think or
talk about. But I was all alone; none in the house with me but the
servants, and the servants’ wing was detached from the main part of the
building, for I do not care to have menials near me, and I had no loved
ones near.
It was just such a night that Nancy Black died. “What a fearful night
for the soul to leave its earthly home and go out into the vast, unknown
future!” I spoke aloud, as, rousing from a train of thought, I drew my
heavy mantle closer round me, wheeled my arm-chair nearer the fire, and
cuddled down in it, burying my feet in the foot-cushion to warm them,
for I felt strangely cold. I was in the library; it was my usual
sitting-room, for I seldom used the parlors. What was the use? My books
were my friends, and I loved best to be with them. My children dead, or
married and away, the cold, grand parlors always seemed gloomy and sad;
the ghosts of departed pleasures haunted them, and I cared not to enter
them.
It was a long, wide room across the hall from the parlors, running the
whole length of the house, and was lined with shelves from floor to
ceiling. My husband’s father had been a bibliomaniac, and my husband had
had a leaning that way also, and the shelves held many an old rare work
that was worth its weight in gold. The fire, though burning brightly,
did not illume one-half the room of which, sitting in the chimney
corner, I commanded a full view, and had been looking at the shadows
playing on the furniture and shelves, as the flame shot up, and after
flickering a moment, would die out, leaving a gloom which would break
away into fantastic shadows as the firelight would again shoot up.
While watching the gleams of light and darkling shades, unconsciously
the wailing of the storm outside attracted my attention, there seemed to
be odd noises of tapping on the windows, and sobs and sighs, as though
someone was entreating entrance from the fierce tumult; and as I sat
there, again I thought of Nancy Black, the old schoolgirl friend who had
loved me so dearly, and the night when she went forth to meet the doom
appointed her; resting my head upon my hand, I sat gazing in the fire,
thinking over her strange life, and still stranger death, and wondering
what could have become of the money and jewels that I knew she had once
possessed.
While sitting thus, a queer sensation crept over me; it was not fear,
but a feeling as though if I’d look up I’d see something frightful; a
shiver, not like that of cold, ran from my head to my feet, and a
sensation as though someone was breathing icy cold breath upon my
forehead, the same feeling you would cause by holding a piece of ice to
your cheek; it fluttered over my face and finally settled round my lips,
as though the unseen one was caressing me, thrilling me with horror. But
I am not fearful, nervous nor imaginative, and resolutely throwing off
the dread that fell upon me, I turned round and looked up, and there, so
close by my side that my hand, involuntarily thrown out, passed through
her seeming form, stood Nancy Black. It was Nancy Black, and yet not
Nancy Black; her whole body had a semi-transparent appearance, just as
your hand looks when you hold it between yourself and a strong light;
her clothing, apparently the same as worn in life, had a wavy, seething,
flickering look, like flames have, and yet did not seem to burn.
“In the name of God, Nancy Black, what brought you here, and whence came
you?” I exclaimed.
A hollow whisper followed:
“Thank you, my old friend, for speaking to me, and, oh, how deeply I
thank you for thinking of me to-night--I shall have rest.”
Rest! I heard echoed, and a jeering laugh rang through the room that
made her quiver at its sound.
“I have been near you often; but always failed to find you in a
condition when you would be en rapport before to-night. What I came for
I will tell you; whence I come, you need not know; suffice it to say,
that were I happy I would not be here on such an errand, nor on such a
night--it is only when the elements are in a tumult, and the winds wail
and moan, that we come forth. When you hear these sounds it is souls of
the lost you hear mourning their doom--’tis then they wander up and
down, to and fro, their only release from their fearful home of torture
and undying pain.
“I have come to tell you that you must go over to the old house, and in
the back room I always kept locked, have the carpet taken up from toward
the fireplace. You will see a plank with a knot-hole in it. Remove that,
and you will find what caused me to lose my soul--have prayers said for
me, for ’tis well to pray for the dead. The money and jewels give in
charity; bury in holy ground the others you find, and pray for them and
me. Ah! Jeannette, you thought your old friend, though strange and odd,
pure and innocent. It is a bitter part of my punishment that I must
change your thought of me. Farewell! Do not fail me, and I shall trouble
you no more. But whenever you hear that wind howl and sweep round the
house as it does to-night, know that the lost are near. It is their
swift flight through space--fleeing before the scourge of memory and
conscience--that causes that sound.