The Argosy — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

Fatthful unto Death. 29 “Don’t, Tom; don’t say that. I was as wide awake from the firstas 1am now. JDo you not see what it must have been ?” ‘‘ My dear, I only see that your nerves are all abroad. Look at the thing practically: he could not have come in. I was late to- night, you know, getting on for eleven, and I locked and bolted the front door myself when I came in.” “Tt was Lionel, Tom, but not in life,” I shivered. ‘* Lionel Payne is dead ; he appeared to me in spirit. He came to let me know it. If it was zof his apparition, if it was himself, where has he disappeared to ?” Tl look about a bit,” said Tom. ‘‘Some thieving fellow may have got in through one of the windows. Prowling about to see what he can pick up!” “Do you think I could mistake anyone else for him?” I sadly said. ‘He was not altered at all—except that he looked strangely pale and mournful.” Tom looked about the passage and into the two unused chambers, one of them near the head of the staircase; then he went below. I went with him, simply because I dared not stay alone. ‘The front door was locked, as he said ; no one could have come in at it; the windows were all fast. I think Tom felt puzzled. Aunt Di was coughing when our survey came to anend. I shut myself into her room until the morning. News, by telegram, reached Pressgate from Sweden that same afternoon. Lionel Payne had met with an accident on the rails the previous evening ; he had died about midnight. It was about midnight that I saw him. ‘That he had most as- suredly appeared to me—come to tell me of 1t—there could be no manner of doubt. It was his way of showing me that the oath which had bound us together was at an end—as I believe, and always shall believe. Even sceptical Tom came round in a de- sree to my way of thinking; he was brought to admit that I must have seen a figure, which was wholly unaccounted for. We did not tell Aunt Di, or Margaret when she returned ; we did not make it known to the world; but we often talked of it with hushed breath between ourselves—Tom and I and David Malcolm. Being of Scotch descent, #e believed that it might be as I main- tained. Lionel died in June. In September I became David Malcolm’s wife. And I wish every girl could find as good a husband and be as happy as I am! Eva Bellaire? She went home to her mother in the West Indies that same year, and by the last mail we received wedding cards. Eva had espoused an old man who had grown rich on a sugar plan- tation. CoOnnicbooks (CO)