“This place depresses me horribly. I don’t know when I’ve felt so sad,” Miss Smith observed. “It’s very stupid of me, I know, but I can’t help thinking some great tragedy must have taken place here.”
“I feel rather like that too,” Miss Raven responded. “I’ve never seen such dreariness. Do you see those shadows on the water? How strange they are! There’s nothing that I can see to account for them. There’s certainly nothing the least like them in the sedge. Besides, there oughtn’t to be any shadows there. There are none anywhere else. Look! Oh, do look! They are changing. They are completely different now. See, I’ll throw a stone at them.” Her throw, missing its mark, was so characteristically girlish that Miss Smith, despite her leanings to suffragism, laughed. Miss Raven threw again, and this time a deep plomb announced her success. “There,” she cried triumphantly. “Now do you see it?”
“I see something,” Miss Smith answered. Then, with sudden eagerness: “Yes, you are right. The shadows are continually changing. They seem to separate themselves from the sedge, and fall like live things into the pool. By the way, the pool seems to be growing darker and bigger. I don’t like the place at all. For Heaven’s sake let’s get away from it!”
Miss Raven, however, was too fascinated. Stepping carefully, so as to avoid the mud and long grass, she went right up to the pool and peered into it.
“How fearfully deep and still it is,” she said. “What a beastly place to end one’s days in.” Then she gave a sudden cry. “Aileen! Here! Come here, quick!”
Miss Smith hastened up to her. “What is it?” she said. “How you frightened me!”
Miss Raven pointed excitedly at the water. It was no longer tranquil. The chickweed round the edges began to oscillate, white bubbles formed in the centre, and then, quite suddenly, the entire surface became a seething, hissing, rushing, roaring whirlpool, which commenced rising in the most hideous and menacing manner. Seizing Miss Raven by the arm, Miss Smith dragged her back, and the two fled in terror. The fog, however, was so thick that they missed their way. They failed to strike the road, and, instead, found themselves plunging deeper and deeper into a fearful quagmire of mud and the rankest compound of rushes, weeds, and grass.
They were just despairing of ever extricating themselves when Miss Smith felt a light tap on her shoulder, and swinging round, was almost startled out of her senses at the sight of a very white face glaring at her. Miss Raven, noticing that her companion had stopped, also turned round; and she too received a shock. The face she saw was so very white; the eyes—intently fixed on Miss Smith—so strangely luminous; the head—covered with red, shaggy hair—so disproportionately large; and the figure—that of a hunchback youth—as a whole so extraordinarily grotesque.
He made no sound, but, signing to them to follow him, he began to move away with a queer, shambling gait. The girls, thankful enough to have found a guide, however strange, kept close at his heels, and soon found themselves once again on the roadway. Here their conductor came to a halt, and producing from under his coat what looked like a lady’s reticule, he was about to thrust it into Miss Smith’s hand when their eyes met, and, to her intense astonishment, he uttered a bitter cry of disappointment and vanished. His action and disappearance were so inexplicable that the girls, completely demoralised, took to their heels and ran without stopping till the ruins were far in their rear, and they were well on their way home.
They related their experience to the people with whom they were staying, and were then told for the first time that the ruin was well known to be haunted. “Nothing will persuade any of the villagers to visit the mill pond after dusk,” their hostess remarked, “especially at this time of the year, when they declare the water suddenly rises and follows them. The place has a most sinister reputation, and certainly several people, to my knowledge, have committed suicide there. The last to do so was Davy Dyer, the hunchback, whose ghost you must have just seen. His was rather a sad case, as I have good reason to know. Would you like to hear it?”