Godfrey went to bed, thinking that he did not much like these old legends and old scandals; and as for ghosts, the idea was too ridiculous! Still, there were certainly an odd variety of nocturnal noises at Waynflete—scratch, tap—rats and mice? Then a low murmuring and sobbing—the wind? He stuck his candle in the open window, and the flame hardly stirred. There was an interval of silence, and he got into bed and fell asleep as he ran through in his mind all the causes of mysterious noises—distant trains, coughing sheep, scraping creepers, pecking pigeons, whistling wind, scratching mice, etc, etc.
He was awakened by a violent clutch on his shoulder, and starting up saw, in the stream of moonlight from the window, his brother, half dressed and deadly pale, who fell on his knees beside him, hiding his face and grasping him so tightly that he was hardly able to move.
“Guy—I say! Guy! Good Lord, what’s the matter with you? Ill? Got the nightmare? I say—let go—I can’t stir!”
Guy loosened his hold after a moment or two, but he shook from head to foot, and Godfrey, tumbling out of the bed, pushed him up on to it, and stood staring at him as he lay with hidden face.
“What the dickens is the matter with you? I say, Guy! Can’t you speak?”
There was no answer, and Godfrey bethinking himself that cold water was supposed to be an appropriate remedy for sudden ailments, plunged his sponge into the water-jug, and soused it on his brother’s head. It was so far effectual that Guy began to fetch his breath again, in long sobbing gasps, while Godfrey, to his increased horror, felt that there were tears on the face that was pressed against his hand.
“Oh, I say, Guy! I say—what is making you such an awful duffer? What is the matter with you?”
Poor Guy shivered and trembled, perhaps not finding Godfrey’s method very helpful; but he came more to himself by degrees, asked for some water to drink, and pulled the coverings round him.
“Didn’t you see—him?” he whispered at last. “See—see what? Oh, I say! Guy, you haven’t been dreaming of the ghost? Oh, I say! how can you be such a duffer! You’re as bad as when you used to climb into my crib, and Auntie Waynflete whipped you, after that nursemaid made the bogie and scared you.” What difference it might have made to Guy Waynflete if, at that moment of terrible experience he had had some comprehending friend to soothe and sustain him, it is impossible to say; as it was, his boyish pride and self-consciousness began to revive, under his brother’s rough dealing; he made an effort to pull himself together, laughed in an odd, startling way, and said—
“Dreaming! Yes, of course I was dreaming. Don’t you ever say one word about it.”