A cricket in a crevice startled her. She ran to the window and looked anxiously out upon the park, then hastened to the door, with equal anxiety, lest it might be unlocked. Every shadow was to her feverish fancy a spirit of evil or of death.
“I wish Nell would come,” she thought. “The ghosts and skeletons fairly swarm in this old house at midnight; and I am all alone to-night. It’s different when Nell’s about. The goblins are afraid of her merry laugh. Boo! I am cold all over. I am afraid to stand still, and I am afraid to move.”
She ran again to the window and this time pulled it open. The moonlight instantly flooded the room, dimming the candles which she had lighted. She saw her shadow, and started back in horror.
“Some one glided behind the old oak in the park,” she cried aloud, for the company of her voice. “Oh, oh! Nell will be murdered! I begged her not to go to Portsmouth’s ball. She said she just wanted to peep in and pay her respects to the hostess. Moll! You better pray.”
She fell upon her knees and reverently lifted her hands and eyes in prayer.
Something fell in the room with a heavy thud. She shut her eyes tight and prayed harder. The object of her fear was a long gray boot, which had been thrown in at the window and had fallen harmlessly by her side. It was followed in an instant by its mate, equally harmless yet equally dreadful.
A jaunty figure, assisted by a friendly shoulder, then bounded over the balustrade and rested with a sigh of relief just within the window-opening. It was Nell, returning from the wars; she was pale, almost death-like. The evening’s excitement, her daring escapade and more especially its exciting finish had taken hold of her in earnest. Her dainty little self was paying the penalty. She was all of a tremble.
“Safe home at last!” she cried wearily. “Heaven reward you, Strings.”
From below the terrace, without the window, responded the fiddler, in sympathetic, loving tones: “Good night, Mistress Nell; and good sleep.”
“Good night, comrade,” answered Nell, as she almost fell into the room, calling faintly: “Moll! Moll! What are you doing, Moll?”