“He is quieter,” the doctor was saying, “and the night may pass easily. But if he should be delirious again—”
“I will be here, sir,” David announced briefly, at his side.
“You will? Good, you can be of some help if things go badly. And be sure to call me the moment there is any change. If there were only something that would rouse him from that stupor!”
Miss Miranda looked much like a shadow, but she greeted them as cheerily as ever and seemed most eager to know how their affairs had gone during the last three days, and was as happy as they were in the hopeful report of results.
“I was rather worried about David,” she admitted, and he confessed cheerfully that he had been much worse than worried about himself.
“At the last minute I began quite to enjoy the excitement of it,” he declared, “but I don’t care to go through it a second time. I will never cut things quite so close again.”
The cottage was to be crowded that night for Elizabeth was to sleep there, upon Miss Miranda’s urging it, and David, since there were no more spare beds, undertook to make up a couch for himself on one of the low benches in the workshop. Elizabeth had opportunity, while Miss Miranda had gone to fetch some blankets, of telling David that Michael, too, had been seeing strange things in the garden of the ruined house.
“I can guess what Michael thought if he saw that moving light,” the boy observed. “He would have a hundred explanations where we have not been able to find one. When we get some of these other affairs off our minds, we will have to go and watch for it again.”
“Y—yes,” assented Betsey. She was not entirely sure whether she cared to investigate further.
“There is one thing that I have found out,” he went on. “I came across the grounds of the old house this evening while it was still light, to gather up some of the books I used to keep there and that I will not use again. And I found that these last spring storms have weakened and washed out those broken walls worse than ever, so that nothing but a ghost or goblin could walk over them without coming to grief.”