The ghost in the red shirt was gone, and I could not hear any footsteps in the vacant room.
After that it was a thousand years till morning. Our watches had all stopped, so I may be allowed my own estimate of the time, I hope.
Well, I think that’s all of the ghost-story. It would take too long to tell how we walked home at daybreak—six miles, it was, right through the woods, and Aunt Jane and the Professor puffing like steam-engines before we had gone a mile—or how Uncle John had a steam-launch out searching for our remains. All that would make another story, and one is my limit.
Oh, I didn’t go to sleep in that cabin and dream all this—how would you account for Clifford’s behavior since that night, then? And what about the red note-book? That is evidence that the ghost was real enough, I should think.
We had all seen him alike, only Jack said he “wanted a shave,” which I hadn’t noticed, and the Professor wrapped his description up in so many long words that there was no getting at the sense of it—except that he did see a ghost.
Aunt Jane didn’t see him at all; she says she’d have died of fright if she had; and, of course, Mabel, sleeping through the performance as she did, was perfectly furious. She even went so far as to say we all made it up among us just to annoy her.
Mabel and the Professor left the same day soon after that. Mabel simply couldn’t treat me decently after she knew——
Oh, and I have another ruby ring, exactly like the one which lies off Weir Point. And Clifford has oceans of faith in women.
(The End.)
Transcriber’s Note