CHAPTER IV.
"Oh, Honor, is it true?" Belle Delorme cries breathlessly, as she meets her friend midway on the Rectory lawn. "Launce has been telling us—but sure he laughed so we couldn't believe him—that the old abbot has begun to walk again."
"It is quite true that people say he has," Honor answers guardedly.
She is pale to-day, and there is a weary look in her eyes that give a pathetic expression to the whole face.
"And he has really been seen, dear?" exclaims Belle, raising her hands in dismay. "Oh, but it is dreadful! Sure we never thought such things could happen in our day."
"What a goose you are!" Launce says, coming up at this moment. "Such things, as you call them, never happened and never will; it's all a hoax—some scamps doing it for a lark; and one of these nights when I've nothing better to do, I'll go down and ferret out the rascal."
"Oh, no, no, Launce, dear! Promise me that you'll do nothing of the kind," Belle cries in genuine distress. "It would be madness. If the old abbot is walking, depend upon it it is for some good reason; trouble is coming to the family in some shape of form."
But Launce only laughs at her, and even Honor will not confess her belief in this supernatural visitor.
"If it could tell us anything," she says in her grave way, "it would be different—good might come of it; as it is, it does nothing but scare away visitors and keep our servants in such a state of terror that they can't attend to their work. It is really very disagreeable."
"Oh, Honor darling, how can you talk like that?" Belle cries with a little shiver. "I declare you are almost as bad as Launce."