“I’m only speaking as an ex-chemist and druggist,” said Timothy gravely; “but please forgive me. Tell me what it is, Mary.”
“Miss Maxell,” she said.
“Miss Mary Maxell,” he compromised.
“First I’ll tell you the least worst,” she began. “It happened about one o’clock in the morning. I had gone to bed awfully tired, but somehow I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and walked about the room. I didn’t like putting on the light because that meant drawing down the blinds which I had let up when I went to bed, and the blinds make such a noise that I thought the whole of the house would hear. So I put on my dressing-gown and sat by the window. It was rather chilly, but my wrap was warm, and sitting there I dozed. I don’t know how long, but it was nearly an hour, I think. When I woke up I saw a man right in the centre of the lawn.”
Timothy was interested.
“What sort of a man?”
“That is the peculiar thing about it,” she said. “He wasn’t a white man.”
“A coon?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No, I think it must have been a Moor. He wore a long white dress that reached down to his ankles, and over that he had a big, heavy black cloak.”