The man hesitated, eyeing the boys. Desmond's smile melted him, as it would have melted a mummy.
"There's nothing to see," he said.
Then, in answer to a few eager questions, he told the story of the Haunted House; haunted, indeed, by the ghosts of what might have been. A city magnate owned the place. He had bought it because he wished to educate his only son at Harrow as a "Home-Boarder," or day-boy. A few weeks before the boy should have joined the school, he fell ill with diphtheria, and died. The mother, who nursed him, caught the disease and died also. The father, left alone, turned his back upon a place he loathed, resolving to hold it till building-values increased, but never to set eyes on it again. The caretaker and his wife occupied a couple of rooms in the house.
The boys glanced at the house, a common-place mansion, and began to explore the gardens. To their delight they found in the shrubberies, now a wilderness of laurel and rhododendron, a tower—what our forefathers called a "Gazebo," and their neighbours a "Folly." The top of it commanded a wide, unbroken view—
"Of all the lowland western lea,
The Uxbridge flats and meadows,
To where the Ruislip waters see
The Oxhey lights and shadows."
"There's the Spire," said John.
The man, who had joined them, nodded. "Yes," said he, "and my mistress and her boy are buried underneath it. She wanted him to be there—at the school, I mean—and there he is."
"We're very much obliged to you," said Desmond. He slipped a shilling into the man's hand, and added, "May we stay here for a bit? and perhaps we might come again—eh?"
"Thank you, sir," the man replied, touching his hat. "Come whenever you like, sir. The gates ain't really locked. I'll show you the trick of opening 'em when you come down."
He descended the steep flight of steps after the boys had thanked him.