Vashti's Fate — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

s 56 GOSSIP—EVERLEIGH ANTECEDENTS. all; but that don’t help him any, seein’ he’s dead. I'd just like to know how he died, though. One thing is certain, if there was anything unfair about it, Margery Gresham must have known of it. They say folks has seen his ghost at the Hermitage. Haven’t you ever seen anything?” Miss Dale shrugged her shoulders. ‘‘It would be rather dangerous for me to tell what I’ve seen and heard. It might be the means of my losing my place.” ‘‘Oh, dear, I shouldn't tell, you know. It would be as safe with me as if you had never told it.” ‘Well, you must swear you won't tell it, hie sf ‘‘Oh, never!” ‘Well, I had been up in the loft reading some old novels. Whatever possessed me to come back by the Her- mitage I don’t know. There was another stairway, but come I did. The door that opens into the Hermitage © from this is placed in the back of a large, dark recess. As I came by, I glanced, half frightened toward it. It stood wide open, and away down a long, narrow hall I sawa shape, a something, writhing along over the floor BES a huge, great snake. _ ‘‘T could feel the very hairs of my head quake, and I was thinking that never in all my life had I seen, or heard, or read of a snake like this. Why, Mrs, Sparks, it was as large round as an ox, and I could hear a kind of grating noise, like something heavy dragged over the floor, when it writhed itself along. Imagine, if you can, what I must have felt when that crawling thing lifted from the floor a face—not a human face, oh, no; it seemed to me the face of a devil. I thought I should have died ; and as I fancied it was coming toward me, I screamed, as you never heard — anybody, and ran, perfectly beside myself, toward the land- ~ €omicbooks.co gee e ts , | ° Pd See, rs ss — “= : . poset ermane tHe sf 7 ‘ * =< et A ar Lu ei% ah ; bagi <3 ae > ~ ad at i 4 7 - . s. . +. » * ry ~ » 7 . - ” *