"Hush, for Heaven's dear sake, both of you!" exclaimed the old lady. "Tabby is so sentimental and Libby is so superstitious, that what with the snivelling of one of you and the shuddering of the other, and the talking of both, I should get the horrors myself if it weren't for Gem, my bright Gem there, humming a tune to her humming wheel!" said the old lady, with an affectionate glance towards the young girl. "And I wonder," she added, "what has become of Joe? I shouldn't wonder if the poor fellow had gone out to the pine woods to collect the cones. But now, Tabby and Libby, let me hear no more of your snivelling and shivering."
"But I can't help of it, mother. I should die if I didn't cry. Hallow Eve, especially a dark, drizzly, windy, dreary Hallow Eve like this, always brings back that awful night so vividly again. I seem to see it all again. I seem to see my child, raging and burning like the Spirit of Fire she called herself. I seem to hear that piercing shriek that woke up all the house. I seem to meet that flying form in the flowing white dress, and with the scared and pallid face. I seem to feel the hot blood flowing down upon my hands and face, as I caught her in my arms and tried to stop her, when she broke from me and fled screaming into the library, and threw herself upon Lyon Berners' breast, dying. How can I help it? How can I help it?" cried Miss Tabby with a burst of tears.
"It is her spirit a hovering over you, and impressing on you, Tabitha," solemnly whispered Miss Libby.
"I shouldn't wonder! no, I shouldn't wonder the least in the world," assented Miss Tabby, with a serious nod of her head.
"And remember, Tabby, that her murderer is still at large, and her spirit cannot rest until that murderer is brought to justice," whispered Miss Libby.
"Ah, but who was her murderer? Surely Elizabeth Winterose, you do not dare to hint as it was my darling, that beautiful and noble lady who was so nearly executed for the crime she never could have committed?" demanded Miss Tabby, with awful gravity.
"Tabitha Winterose, you know I don't," answered Miss Libby, in solemn indignation.
"I'm glad to hear you say so, for she never did it, nor yet could have done it, though she had cause enough, poor dear! cause enough to go raving mad with jealousy, and to hate her rival unto death, if ever a lady had. But she never was that poor woman's death, though well the woman might have deserved it at her hands. But she never did it! No, she never did it!" reiterated Miss Tabby, with many vain repetitions, as she wiped her faded blue eyes.
"And if Rosa Blondelle's spirit cannot rest in her grave, it an't so much because her rale murderer is at large, as it is because Sybil Berners, her benefactress, as she wronged so ungratefully when she was alive, is now falsely accused of her death," whispered Miss Libby.
"Yes, and, would a been just as falsely executed for it too, if she hadn't a been reskeed on that dreadful night of the flood. And where is she now? Where is the last of the Berners now? An exile and a wanderer over the face of the earth! A fugitive from justice, they call her! 'A fugitive from justice!' when all she needs to make her happy in this world, if she still lives in it, is jest simple justice. Oh! I shall never, never, forget that awful night of the storm and flood, when with her infant of a few hours old, which they had waited for it to be born before they meant to murder her, she was suddenly snatched out of the flooded prison and carried away from sight, as if the waters had swallowed her! And that was the second horrible Hallow Eve of my life!" sobbed Miss Tabby.