Nevertheless, in accordance with an adage which must be of Irish extraction, "Where there is no fear there is no danger," our two ladies, their two maids, and Mrs. Lushington's footman, were all deposited safely at a wayside station in the dark; the last named functionary, a regular London servant, who had never before been ten miles from the Standard, Cornhill, arriving in the last stage of astonishment and disgust. He cheered up, however, to find a man, in a livery something like his own, waiting on the platform, with welcome news of a carriage for the ladies, a car for the luggage, and a castle not more than three miles off!
"You must be tired, dear," said Mrs. Lushington, sinking back among the cushions of an easy London-built brougham. "But, thank goodness, here we are at last. Three miles will soon be over on so good a road as this."
But three Irish miles, after a long journey, are not so quickly accomplished on a dark night in a carriage with one of its lamps gone out. It seemed to the ladies they had been driven at least six, when they arrived at a park wall, some ten feet high, which they skirted for a considerable distance ere they entered the demesne through a stately gateway, flanked by imposing castellated lodges on either side.
Here a pair of white breeches, and the indistinct figure of a horseman, passed the carriage-window, flitting noiselessly over the mossy sward.
"Did you see it, Blanche?" asked Mrs. Lushington, who had been in Ireland before. "It's a banshee!"
"Or a Whiteboy!" said Miss Douglas laughing. "Only I didn't know they wore even BOOTS, to say nothing of the other things!"
But the London footman, balancing himself with difficulty amongst his luggage on the outside car, was more curious, or less courageous.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, in the disturbed accents of one who fears a ghost only less than a highwayman.
"Which?" said the driver, tugging and flogging with all his might to raise a gallop for the avenue.