Madge Morton's Trust

by Amy D. V. Chalmers

The young people looked at one another with relieved expressions.

"I'm so grateful it isn't night time," sighed Eleanor.

"I didn't make any noise," declared David, seeming rather confused. No one paid any attention to his reply. They were again clustered about Harry Sears, begging him to go on with his ghost story.

"Things went from bad to worse in the house I was telling you about," continued Harry. "Every night, at the same hour, the same noise was heard and the old man and the girl reappeared. Why, once Mr. Peabody was sitting in his garden, just as we are doing here"—Harry glanced across the old garden. Was it a branch that stirred behind the tangle of evergreen bushes? The day was very still—"and he saw the same old man walk by him and enter his house through a closed side door. After awhile Mrs. Smith became ill from the strain and she sent for a physician who had been living in the neighborhood a long time. The doctor did not wish to come to see Mrs. Smith just at first. When he did he related his own experience in the same house years before. He had just moved into the neighborhood, as a young physician, when one night, at about midnight, he was aroused by some one ringing his bell. An old man asked the doctor to come with him at once, as a young girl, his grand-daughter, was dangerously ill. Dr. Block went with the old gentleman. He found the young girl, dying with consumption, in a room on the second floor of a house. An old lady was with her, but the doctor saw no one else. He wrote a prescription, put it on the mantel-piece and said he would come back in the morning."

Harry stopped talking. A distant roll of thunder interrupted him.

"Do hurry, Harry; we must be off!" exclaimed Jack Bolling.

"The next morning the doctor went back to the same house. It was closed and boarded up, and the caretaker told the physician that no one had lived in the house for many years. The doctor was indignant, so the caretaker opened the door and let Dr. Block into the house, so he could see for himself that it was empty. The hall was covered with dust, but a single pair of footprints could be seen going from the hall door to the bedroom on the second floor. The old man had left no tracks. The physician entered the room, which was empty. There was no old man, no old woman, no sick girl, not even a bed, but"—Harry made a dramatic pause—"the doctor walked over to the mantel-piece and there lay the prescription that he had written the night before!"

"Oh, my! Oh, my!" exclaimed Lillian. She was on her feet, pointing with trembling fingers toward a window of the old house which was back of the rest of the party. "I am sure I saw a face at that window," she cried. "No one will believe me, but I did, I did! It was a girl's face, too, very white and thin. Please take me away from here."

Madge slipped her arms about the frightened Lillian. For an instant she almost believed that she, too, had seen the specter that must have been born of Lillian's overwrought imagination as a result of the ghost stories she had just heard.

Madge and Lillian led the way down the tangled path from the haunted house. They were some distance from the others when the little captain discovered that David was following them. She had not looked at him, not spoken to him since he had so rudely refused her simple request.