What a time I must have been dreaming on the housetop!
I searched the compound and all the accessible portions of the house thoroughly, but I found and saw nothing. I wakened all the slumbering occupants of the ‘godowns,’ to see if they had any strangers amongst them, but only my own domestics came yawningly to be inspected, and certainly not one of them answers to the description of the supposed ghost. As I returned, I rapped at the closed venetians of Miss Anstruther’s bedroom, and, to my astonishment, her voice replied to me immediately.
‘What! are you awake, Margaret?’ I demanded. ‘Was it the noise disturbed you?’
‘What noise?’ she asked, as she came near to the venetians.
‘Janie’s scream. She fancies that she saw the ghost (which I hoped she had almost forgotten), and that it passed close under her windows.’
‘Poor child!’ in a voice of compassion. ‘No, I did not hear, or I should have gone to her; but I have not been long awake;’ which, indeed, her voice seemed to testify.
‘Why are you out of your bed?’
‘I cannot sleep; it is so hot,’ she answered with a deep sigh.
‘And you have seen nothing?’