The Argosy — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

26 The White Witch. he had walked, and the cloth which covered his eyes fell on to the candle and put itout. He backed quickly out, fastening the door. Finding his way back to the table in the hall, he felt for the matches and relit his candle. Then he returned to the cupboard. It could only be fastened from the outside, and the fastening was undisturbed ; so that no one had escaped in his absence. He re-opened the door and searched the long slanting cupboard from end to end ; there was no one there, and no appearance of anyone having been there. A duster on the floor, which he recognised by its smell of paraffine as the one which had been over his face, had evidently fallen on him on his first entrance from a high upper shelf, on which he saw oil-cans and lamp-glasses. He stepped back out of the cupboard, fastened the door again and re-entered the refectory. ‘There were no return marks of feet, there was no one hidden in the room, no one crouch- ing in the passage. He shut the window and left the room, locking the door and taking the key away with him. He was creeping slowly along the passage, examining the floor at every step, when a woman’s shrill shriek from above made him fly to the staircase. A door opened immediately above, and his father came out of the library. At the same moment, Godfrey caught sight of a woman’s figure flitting along the upper corridor. “Laura!” cried out Mr. Mayne. ‘ Mary!” cried out Godfrey ; both speaking at the same time. They hurried upstairs to Mrs. Mayne’s room. Mr. Mayne ran in, and his son followed without ceremony. Mrs. Mayne was sitting up in bed, a large woollen shawl flung over her shoulders, and supported in the arms of her daughter. Mary, who had taken off her ball dress and put on a grey-coloured dressing-gown, was standing by the bedside, wiping her mother’s face with a hand- kerchief. Both were pale and trembled; but Mary was quite self- possessed, while the elder lady was speechless and shuddering. ‘What on earth is all this?” exclaimed the bewildered husband. ‘“Poor mamma!” cried Mary, turning calmly to them. “It is I who have given her a fright now. I thought I would just come to see how she was. My knock at the door she did not hear; and when I came in she screamed out, taking me, I think, for a ghost.” ‘It must be all the fault of that silly Lydia,” returned Mr. Mayne. ‘She absolutely put the question to me—had the Abbey ghosts in it? Ghosts indeed! I should have thought you possessed better sense, my dear, than to be disturbed at any such nonsense,” he added, soothingly, regarding his trembling and terror-stricken wife. ‘‘I think I had better sleep with her to-night, Mr. Mayne, for I am quite sure she would never let you have any rest, and that would disturb her still more,” said Mary. * Do so, my dear, if you think that is best for her. I can sleep on the sofa in the dressing-room.” ‘No, no,” said Mary quickly, ‘that is too near; bic would be listen— Eomicbooks.co m