The Argosy — page 335: what you’re looking at

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

314 The Ghost of ‘* Ours.” search of distraction went to call on Mrs. Smylie. Lally was at home, looking prim and unhappy, sitting bolt upright beside her fire with a lady visitor opposite. I knew her sentiments respecting callers of her own sex (who, she declared to me, “turned up their cold English noses at her”), and pitied her; also her guest, whom I made out by the dim half-light to be a gracious, stately lady, with great, sad eyes and a sweet mouth. Mrs. Smylie welcomed my entrance with evident relief, and her company manners slipped from her as a garment. «So you weren't afraid! I thought none of you’d be venturing up this way in the dark.” I professed polite incomprehension. * As if I didn’t know all about it! Not from Smylie, he’s fit to be tied if you joke him about the ghost. Oh! it’s a bad way he’s in, the poor man!” “ Didn’t the crumpets agree with him?” I asked sympathetically. -Her eyes danced for a moment. “Tf you’d heard him! Tossin’ and groanin’ and startin’ and swearin’ that night! But it wasn’t all crumpets.” She closed her lips and nodded mysteriously. ‘‘ He’d seen something,” she whis- pered presently. ‘‘And Mrs. Dobbins, my laundress, says there’s not a man dare be seen on /fzs staircase after dark without good reason.” The lady sat silent during this and the subsequent conversation, and at last rose to take leave. I accompanied her down the badly- lighted staircase and was hazarding some very mild little joke upon Its evil reputation, when she suddenly stopped—made a catch at the banister, and but for me would have fallen forward. ‘Did you slip?” I asked anxiously, but she gave no answer, only grasping my arm nervously, and I saw that her eyes were fixed intensely on some- thing at the foot of the stairs. ‘‘Who was that?” she asked in a hoarse, frightened voice. ‘There? No one that I can see,” I answered. ‘‘ There, standing in that corner. I saw him.” She suddenly raised herself and hurried down the steps. ‘“‘He was watching us from the shadow of the door.” * Did he go out?” “No. Where caz he be.” I looked round. ‘The door at the foot of the stairs was open to the barrack-yard. On either side were other doors, closed, leading to officers rooms. The gas was lighted, but burning badly, and the corner she pointed to was in gloom. ' ‘That’s Captain Rawlinson’s room on that side. Was it anyone going in there?” She looked doubtful, so I went to explore. Someone was in the room, certainly, but it was only Captain Rawlinson’s servant, deposit- ing a load of boots and newly-brushed clothes. //e had seen no one, so he said. I mentally referred the panic to Lally’s spirited Gomicbooks.con