Meanwhile, Cassy had washed up the supper service and restored the kitchen to order. So that when old Hector returned from his errand, bearing the key of the gate, nothing remained for us to do but examine and close the house, offer up our evening worship, and go to bed, which, as it was very late and we were very tired, we prepared to do at once. After every room was visited, and every door and window firmly secured, we went to the dining-room for family prayer, and then let Cassy and Hector out, and gave them the key to lock the door on the outside, so that they might be able to let themselves in in the morning to light the fires without disturbing us. After having thus dismissed them, closed the door, and heard it locked, we turned to seek our rest.
"I do not consider these lower bedrooms quite dry and safe just at present, girls; so I have had two beds made up in the room overhead, which is large and well ventilated. Alice can sleep with me in the large bed, and you, Madeleine, can occupy the other," said our grandmother, as she led the way upstairs.
I did not quite like the arrangement, but could not resist Mrs. Hawkins.
The upper room, notwithstanding the fact of its being in the roof, was amply high and large enough for a healthful, double-bedded chamber. Our beds stood parallel, but sufficiently far apart, with their heads against the north, or back wall, and their feet toward the front gable, lighted by the fan-shaped window aforesaid. As it was very damp and chill, and we were very much exhausted, we did not linger long over our final preparations, but went speedily to bed.
Our grandmother and Alice seemed scarcely to have settled themselves under their blankets and given me a drowsy good-night when they slid off into the land of dreams.
I could not sleep! I seldom can the first night in a strange house, and this was—such a house! I felt quite alone—as much alone as if the heavy sleepers in the next bed were a thousand miles away, for farther still in spirit were they. I thought of the isolated situation of the house we were in; of the crimes, real or reputed, that had stained its hearthstone; of the superstitious terror attaching to the haunted place; of the hard facts that three several families, not reputed less wise or brave than their neighbors, had been driven from the spot by supernatural disturbance as yet unexplained; of the coincidence that this dreary night was the ghostly Hallow E'en; then of the superstition that spirits, when they wish to appear to only one in a room, have the power of casting all others into a profound sleep, from which the haunted one cannot awake them; and of isolating their victim from all the natural world—even from the very bedfellow by their side. The room was very dark and still—solid blackness and dead silence. It oppressed me like a nightmare. At last, when my senses grew accustomed to the scenes by straining my eyes, I could dimly perceive beyond the foot of the bed the segment of a circle formed by the fan-light window, that now only seemed a thinner darkness; and, by straining my ears, I could faintly hear the stealthy fall of the drizzling rain. It was almost worse than the first total silence and darkness; for it kept my nerves on a strange qui vive of attention. Presently this was over, too. The muffled sound of the drizzling ceased. Yet darker clouds must have lowered over the earth, for the faint outline of the fan-light window was no longer visible. All was once more black darkness and intense silence, and again I felt oppressed almost to suffocation. Welcome now would have been the faint fall of the fine rain or the dim outline of the window. I strained my senses in vain; no sight or sound responded. I felt the silence and the darkness settling like the clods of the ground upon my breast.
Hoo-oo-o!—went something.
Hark! what was that? I thought, starting.
Hoo-oo-o——!
Oh! the wailing voice of some low, wandering wind, I concluded.