He waited for a considerable time in a fever of thrilling expectancy—but there was no more. Having made certain of this, his next move was to acquaint himself with the personality of the performer. He ran over to the ruins of the church, climbed in across a pile of broken masonry—the small square enclosure was easily measured at one glance—it was empty.
Then he walked slowly round, and examined the walls by the dying light. No, his quest was vain, there was not a soul—undoubtedly it had been a soul—to be seen. In the gathering darkness, the now silent valley had grown very sombre, the trees made awful shadows, and the forest seemed to stretch away up the mountains, until it was lost in the dusky sky.
“In what direction did you ride to-day, Mark?” inquired his father as they sat over their dessert.
“I cannot tell you precisely, sir; but I came home by the cantonment.”
“A lovely spot; the authorities could not have chosen better, if they had searched five hundred miles—good air, good water, good aspect; and yet the last regiment died there like flies. The natives say it is an accursed place, and not a man of them will go near it after sundown.”
“I suppose you don’t believe in that sort of thing, sir; you are not superstitious?”
“Not I,” indignantly. “Mércèdes was superstitious enough for fifty; she had all the native superstitions at her finger-ends, and the European ones to boot! There was very little scope left between the two! Almost everything you said, or did, or saw, or wore, was bound to have a meaning, or to be an omen, or to bring bad luck. I remember she was reluctant to start from Mussouri the day she met her death, simply because she found a porcupine’s quill upon the doorstep! I have seen some queer things in my day,” continued Major Jervis. “When we were quartered at Ameroo I got a fright that I did not recover from for months. I had lost my way out pig-sticking, and was coming back alone, pretty late. At one part of the road I had to pass a large irregular strip of water, and there standing upright in the middle of it was actually a skeleton, swaying slowly to and fro; I shall never forget that blood-curdling sight—and I don’t know how I got home, to this very day.”
“And how was it accounted for?”
“By perfectly natural causes, of course! Cholera had broken out at a village close to where I saw the spectre, and the people had died in such numbers that there was no time for the usual funeral pyre. It was as much as those spared could do to bring the corpse to the spot, tie a gurrah (those large water vessels) to head and feet, fill them with water, push the body out, and then turn and fly almost before it could sink out of sight! My ghost was one of these bodies. The gurrah from the head had broken away, and that at the feet had pulled the corpse into an upright position, and there it was, a spectacle to turn a man’s brain! We were quartered at Ameroo for four years, and I never passed that miserable spot without a shudder. When I last saw it the water lay low, covered with the usual reddish-looking Indian water-weed; down by the edge was a skull blackening in the sun. That hideous pool was the grave of two hundred people.”