The Argosy — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

72 All Souls Eve. was, with only one arm, and in a faded old suit of regimentals. No doubt the clothes he had died in. What had been the screams of the Mother Coe to those which now ensued ? Not a saint in the calendar but was invoked with every variety of terrified aspiration ; and the wretched group started to their feet and rushed away, pell-mell, out of the haunted cemetery. Paul, dropping his torch, and ungallantly shaking off the ladies, flew off in front ; the ghost went after them; some choking, some praying, and the rest yelling. The noise penetrated nearly all the way to St. Eloi. | Clara Fitzgerald did not fly with the rest. In rising, her foot caught in a tuft of grass, and she was thrown heavily down again. Her com- panions were then at a distance, and she remained, clasping the marble stone, overcome with faintness and extremity of terror. The ghost came striding back again, in very unghostly fashion. It took up the flickering torch, and held it to her face. “Clare,” it gently said—and, with the words, Clara began to suspect it was no ghost, but real flesh and blood—*“ do I frighten you ?” But she was too terrified still to answer: and her teeth chattered, and her frame shook. “‘T have still one arm left,” he said, digging the torch in the earth, so that it still gave its light, and passing his arm round Clara. “ Those terrified women must have taken me for my own spectre, for I see you have my death recorded here. Some mistake in the returns.” ‘But is it really you?” she said, bursting into tears. ‘“ We thought you were dead.” “So I was nearly, Clare. They took me up for dead last June, in the storming of the Malakhof. I have come home to recruit my strength, come home for good: a one-armed man is useless as a soldier, Per- haps you too will reject me now.” | Her tears flowed on. Delicious tears! “Oh, Clare,” he whispered, as he held her to him, ‘though I have only one arm left, it shall be found powerful to protect you through life—my cherished wife. I said I would come home to you, my dar- ling. None knew the fervent prayer I offered up for it, save God. He heard and blessed it.” “But did you drop from the clouds ?” demanded Madame Latange, in the midst of her tears, when Francis got home. | ‘‘No, mother, I dropped from the diligence. We were invalided home, vi@ Marseilles, and I reached Calais to-day. There I gota banquette place in the six o'clock diligence. The first face-I saw here was Ptre Duterte’s; when he recove-ed from his wonder, he volunteered the information that a compar y hal just started to pray for me in the cemetery. So I thought I’d go atter it, and send Duterte up here first to break the news to my father. How you all screamed!” Gomicbooks.co