It was the mournful clank of a chain again. She saw that “Copper-nob”, near her, was half sitting up, too, swaying like a feather backwards and forwards. She could almost hear the other girl’s teeth chatter.
Her own gave a frozen click, click—and set suddenly, as if in lockjaw.
It was no figment of the imagination now, nor yet a mist-fawn of the night—a pale, gliding mist-shape—there was a something white before her.
It bobbed and bowed towards her, about fifty yards away. It accomplished a weird levitation, ascending automatically into the moonlight—dropping again. And there appeared another white form, poised above it—to the faint, far rattle of a chain.
Lightminded ghosts, they teetered up and down, blanching the moonbeams, now checkered by a thin cloud.
And at the sight “Copper-nob’s” nerves gave way; she “loosed” a shriek that startled everybody.
But it did not exorcise the apparitions.
There they were, undeniable as ever, sketching their chalk-white outlines against the night—so that the heart of the stoutest melted within her bones—in the solemn stillness of the wee’oor—and her flesh crept.
“This is Ghost Craft ... and we’ve none of us—none of us taken honors in that.” Pemrose’s faint mischief was curdled by an eerie note.
“Ghosts that have to be shot through with a silver sixpence!” Andrew’s nonsense came back to her.