The silence was at last broken by the slow, measured tread of some one coming upstairs.
The footsteps crossed the landing.
All turned anxiously towards the door.
Judge of their looks and shouts of fright and horror!
The bodiless legs walked slowly into the room!
CHAPTER IV.
SIR RICHARD WARBECK AND WILDFIRE NED—THE ONE-LEGGED SAILOR’S NARRATIVE.
Darlington Hall, the country residence of Sir Richard Warbeck, was an immense old building, high, strongly built, containing many galleries, vaults, and mysterious ins and outs, with numerous towers, effigies of men in armour on landings, corridors, and rooms, the old baronial edifice covered with ivy for the most part, and stood in a spacious, well-wooded park, not many miles from the sea.
The knight, from some unknown cause, though immensely wealthy, had never married, but consoled himself with adopting two friendless orphan youths, Charles and Edward, or Wildfire Ned, who, in his honour, took the name of Warbeck.