At last it came, faint and far off, sad but unutterably sweet, a low wail of plaintive music—so low that at first it seemed the mere coinage of an overwrought fancy. Nearer it came, and nearer, now growing into a full wave of sound, now ebbing away—the mere echo of a sigh, but always coming nearer and nearer, until it seemed to pause irresolutely by the gate which divides the master's garden from the monitors' lawn. Was it another fancy, or were there for a moment a crowd of white, eager faces pressed against the window which looks upon that lawn? Fancy assuredly, for the moon now gleamed back blankly from the glass. For a moment a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand passed over the moon, and as it cleared away a deep-drawn sigh attracted the watcher's eyes to the garden gate. The moon was full upon it; you could see it shake if it shook ever so little. In that listening midnight you could almost hear the flowers whispering to each other, but the gate neither creaked nor shook, and yet someone had passed through it, someone with bent head, and slow, tired feet, who sighed and told the beads of her rosary as she passed. The moonlight played strange tricks that night; it seemed to cling to and follow that silent figure, leaving a white track on the dew-laden grass. And now it paused for one moment before that window, through which those tear-dimmed eyes had so often and so longingly turned towards her own loved south, and as she paused the silence broke, the window was dashed open, and three athletic figures, figures of men who feared neither man nor devil, sprang out with shouts of laughter, surrounded that white figure, still so strangely quiet, and demanded—its name! At the open window from which the three had issued were now gathered half a dozen ladies, looking half amused, half frightened. Among them was Beauty, the Head's daughter.

With boisterous laughter, that jarred harshly upon the stillness of that midsummer night, the three had dashed upon their prey. Why, then, do they pause? It seemed to those who watched that some whisper had reached their ears and chilled their courage. For one moment the figure's arms were raised aloft, and then the men recoiled, and it passed on as if unconscious of these things of clay, steady and stately, with head bent, slow feet, and hands which still told the rosary beads. For a moment it stood large and luminous on the skyline of that hill which overhangs the sea, the favourite 'look-out' of the old lords of Fernhall; for a moment it raised its sheeted arms as if calling down a curse upon the fated mansion, and then floated seaward and was gone.

The chapel-bell tolled one, and again the Fernhall ghost had baffled the inquisitive investigations of disbelieving men, and had asserted itself in spite of the nineteenth century, the —th Regiment, and the new Head-master. In vain Beauty sought an explanation from her discomfited cavaliers; all she could elicit was that there was something uncanny about it, something not fit for ladies to hear, and she had better go to bed and think no more about it. It would not come again for a year, anyway. So, at last, mightily dissatisfied, the ladies went, and when the men were driving home to barracks long and heartily pealed their laughter and gallant Captain Lowndes vowed again and again that 'That boy would make a right good soldier, sir, hang me if he wouldn't! What was it he said again, the young scoundrel? "I've not a rag on except this surplice, Captain, and, by Jove, if you don't take your hands off I'll drop that. If the ladies don't like me in the spirit, I must appear in the flesh."'

CHAPTER V
THE ADMIRAL'S 'SOCK-DOLLAGER'

'Well, Snap, how are you this morning? You look very down in the mouth.'

'Yes, sir, I don't feel very lively,' replied Snap.

The speakers were Admiral Christopher Winthrop and our old friend Harold, or Snap Hales. The mid-summer term had come to an end, and the boys were all at home at Fairbury for the holidays. Frank and Billy Winthrop were somewhere about the home-farm, and the old Admiral was down at the bottom of the lawn, by the famous brook, intent on the capture of a certain 'sock-dollager' who had been fighting a duel with the sailor for the last three weeks. So far the cunning and shyness of the trout had been more than a match for the skill and perseverance of the red-faced, grey-haired old gentleman on the bank, but the Admiral had served a long apprenticeship in all field-sports, and it would go hard with him if that four-pounder did not, sooner or later, lie gasping at his feet.

'Try an alder, sir,' suggested Snap, who, though no fisherman himself, had long since learnt the name of every fly in the Admiral's book.

'No,' replied that worthy disciple of Walton, 'I'll give him just one more turn with the dun,' and, so saying, he proceeded with the greatest care to strain the gut of another of Ogden's beautiful little flies.