"And supernatural. I should come on the ghost days. For if ever a ghost walked out of its earthy habitation, I should think it would be here. Did you ever see a ghost, Mr. Herbert?"
"I have seen some queer things. But these up here," nodding his head, "seem a very well behaved community. I can't say that they have troubled me; and I've come down the road at twelve or so at night. Perhaps my imagination is not vivid enough in that line. Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Whitney?"
"No, I have not, except the ghosts of my imagination. I can shut my eyes now, and see them come trooping down that lonely road by twos and threes."
Herbert laughed again. "A vivid imagination is worth a good deal at times," he said. "There ought to be a ghost-walk about here; and next time you come over, we'll arrange one so perfectly that he shall defy detection. I'll walk a bit with you, if I am not a ghost."
When he put on his wide-brimmed, rather high-crowned hat, he looked more Spanish than English. They went through another room that opened on a porch, and, from thence, through the garden, or an attempt at one that did not betoken signal success.
The cemetery sloped down from a high hill that was such a thicket of woods it hid all indications of the City of the Dead. The placid river, in which there was only a gentle tide up here, lapped the shores with a little murmur as it came up from the bay. The green, irregular shore opposite showed here and there a house. The wood-robins were beginning their vespers already. Hanny thought them the sweetest singers she had ever heard.
Just here there was a terraced garden-spot and an old house adorned with all kinds of blossoming shrubbery.
"You see we two are guardians of the place, at either end. Miss Whitney, this house could tell some interesting tales of the bygone time; but the glory is departing. In a few years the city will stretch out and invade our solitude."
A wild spot of ground it was below, hilly, gravelly, sloping sharply down to the river. But people were beginning to take advantage of the shore-edge for business. There were shops, and a foundry stretching out smoky, dingy arms in various directions.
They said their good-byes here, as they were in sight of the old Gouverneur mansion. And no one guessed then that a tragedy of love and desperation to madness was soon to follow, and that in the dreary old house "Frank Forrester" was to lie, slain by his own hand, that he waved so jauntily to them as he bade them "Come again."