Simultaneously they turned and frowned at me, as if they did not like the strangeness of my remark. Jasper leaned down and whispered,
“Steady, dear!”
But what I said was true.
I unwired the door, and as they crept up the secret stairs fear fastened my feet to the spot on which I stood.
The dragging and pushing noise increased. There was the crash of glass, and before any one realized what was happening a black shadow slid down off the roof. I ran to the window and saw a little old man pick himself up off the ground and crawl quickly under the house.
At the same time Will Dove’s gun went off, wildly. He had aimed for the skylight, and knocked off two shingles.
“Quit that!” called one of the men above. They were rushing about the empty room, wrenching open the doors of the eaves closet, trying to mount through the hole in the roof and getting in each other’s way.
I let myself down the ladder into the round cellar just as the ghost came scrambling into it by the outside door.
The little scuttling figure wilted down in a heap at my feet upon the earthen floor. Confronted by me, when he thought he had reached a haven, the pitiful thing collapsed. Raising hunted eyes, clawing at my skirt with skinny hands, he moaned in a queer thin voice, “Save me!”
The oilskin hat fell back from the creature’s head, and there was the scraggly, drawn-back, wispy gray hair of a woman. I had seen that face and heard that voice before, and in spite of the flannel shirt and rubber boots, in spite of the fact that she was drowned, I knew that I looked at Mattie!