At the crucial moment Heaven heard my silent prayer; he halted, I was saved! With one hand on the handle, he slowly—very slowly—opened the door, and crouching down on his hands and feet, crept quietly in, muffling the sound of the bucket.
Incongruous sight!—a man, a madman, or a burglar with a common, an every-day bucket, and in the ecstasies of salvation I gave a weak, hysterical laugh!—a madman with a bucket! and what a bucket!
After this little display of emotion, and being now in the full possession of all my motive faculties, I promptly fled, not pausing for the fraction of a second till I had reached the bedside of Dora and had shaken her to wakefulness. She listened to my story with blanched cheeks, beseeching me with terror in her eyes to make sure the door was locked and that her Bible was well in evidence.
Her fears adding to my own, for I now concluded that there was some horrible mystery attached to what I had just witnessed, I hastily scrambled into bed, and, drawing the clothes well over our heads, begged her to confide in me the secret.
“I hardly know how to explain it, Kate,” she whispered, “you will be so shocked! and I’m afraid you will blame us horribly for putting you in that room; but, to tell you the truth, we had nowhere else—at least nowhere suitable, as the ceilings and walls are sadly out of repair.
“You see, we bought this house at a very low price; it had stood empty for a good many months, was in a sad state of dilapidation, and the owner was only too glad to get rid of it.
“After we had settled in, he coolly informed us that it was reputed to be haunted; that the remains of a woman had been found under the cement of the back-kitchen floor (it is now nicely tiled), and that on the anniversary of its committal the tragedy was reported to be re-enacted in all its grim details.”
“And was she murdered in my room?” I inquired.
“It is supposed so,” Dora murmured. “There is a tell-tale stain (which nothing will efface) under the carpet—and—former tenants are reported to have seen all you have witnessed, and rather more.”
“And the murderer! what of him?” I asked, thinking with a shudder of his eyes.