The boy sat up. He was wide awake. He was not dreaming. Stealing up the path to the house was a wraith; tall, thin, emaciated, with hair absolutely white and thin, and skeleton-like hands; it was the semblance of an old man. He was not human; he made no noise, he did not seem to walk, he floated along. There was something dreadfully sad in the ghost's appearance. Yet he was not alone. He led some one by the hand, a young girl, who was more ghost-like than he was. Her hair was floating out from her tiny, gnome-like face. She was thinner and more pathetic than the old man. She had no expression in her face and she, too, made no sound.
The awestruck boy did not stir. The midnight visitants to the empty house did not notice him. They came up to the porch. They mounted the steps and, without touching the fallen front door, passed silently into the deserted mansion.
David did not know how long he waited, spellbound, after this apparition. But no sound came forth from the house; no one reappeared. The black cat rubbed against him the second time. Even the cat must have been dumb, for she made no noise, did not even purr.
David Brewster was not a coward. If you had asked him in the broad daylight if he were afraid of ghosts he would have been too disgusted at the idea even to answer you. But to-night he could not reason, could not think. As soon as he could get his breath he ran with all his speed down through the yard of the "ha'nted house," over the fence and into the road, and then for the rest of the distance to the Preston house. He forgot his fatigue, forgot that he might have to answer difficult questions once he got home. David wanted to be with real, live people after his night of fears.
The boy found no lights in the Preston house. The front door was closed and the back one barred for the night. Evidently the excursionists had come back late and, believing him to be in bed, had not wished to disturb him.
David prowled around the house. He hated to wake anybody up to let him in. He knew that Miss Betsey would be frightened into hysterics by the sudden ringing of a bell. The boy found a pantry window unlocked. Opening it, he crawled into the house. He got up to his bedroom without anybody coming out to see who it was that had entered the house at such a mysterious hour. It was not until early the next morning that David learned that he need not have been so careful, as there was no one in the Preston house except himself and some of the servants.
CHAPTER XIII
ELEANOR GETS INTO MISCHIEF
MRS. PRESTON, Miss Jenny Ann and Miss Betsey, in the old phaeton, plodded on ahead of the young people to show them the route to the old sulphur springs. They passed by a number of beautiful Virginia farms and old homesteads along the shady roads. Miss Betsey was deeply interested in the history of the neighborhood, and in the old families that had lived in this vicinity since the close of the Civil War. Mrs. Preston liked nothing better than to relate that history to her New England guest.
To tell the truth, Miss Betsey Taylor was far more clever than any one might have supposed. She remembered very well that the friend of her youth, Mr. John Randolph, had come from somewhere near Culpepper, Virginia. Nor was she by any means unwilling to know what had become of him after he had disappeared from her horizon. But Miss Taylor did not intend to ask her hostess any direct questions if she could be persuaded to relate the story of this John Randolph in the natural course of her conversation. It may be that Miss Betsey had even been influenced in her desire to spend some time on the Preston estate by this same thirst for information in regard to the friend who had certainly lived not far from this very neighborhood.