The colonel sat gazing, sad and thoughtful, out toward the knoll, where, resting in the moonlight, the victims of that horrible tragedy now slept their sleep of eternity in the lone, grassy grave.
The winds whispered softly among the trees; a song-bird twittered drowsily in its nest; then a long, mournful howl from a wolf on the distant hills broke the silence of the summer night. Maud, looking wistfully out to the west, where the great planets, those mute sentinels of time, kept their watch in the sky, repeated the sweet, pathetic "Dirge" of Tennyson:—
"Round thee blow, self pleached deep,
Bramble-roses, faint and pale,
And long purples of the dale,—
Let them rave;
These in every shower creep
Through the green that folds thy grave.
Let them rave.
Chanteth not the brooding bee
Sweeter tones than calumny?"
A wild cry from Mrs. Moreland startled the group from their reverie and broke in abruptly upon their musing. As they lifted their eyes or sprang to their feet in dismay, she pointed, with trembling finger, to where the uncertain moonlight flickered through the willows, and there they beheld a sight which froze them with horror, and haunted them with its mystery for long months thereafter.
But a few paces from where they sat stood the form of a strange, gray figure, in a loose, long robe, its locks and flowing beard of snowy white, its wildly gleaming eyes and snaggled fangs, showing dimly in the spectral light. With a long, bony finger pointed at the group, the figure stood for a brief moment; then, with a blood-chilling scream, it faded away amid the shadows.
Clifford Warlow and Ralph Moreland sprang after the vanishing figure, unheeding the wild shrieks of Maud and Grace, who begged them not to follow the frightful apparition. As the young men disappeared among the trees, Mrs. Warlow fell prone upon the earth with a low moan; and while all of the party that remained forgot their terror in their efforts to restore her from the death-like swoon in which she had fallen, the young men returned, reporting a fruitless search.
It was now proposed, as Mrs. Warlow had revived, that the boys—Clifford, Ralph, Scott, and Robbie—should make a more extended search with the three dogs; but they could not force the terror-stricken animals to leave the camp-fire, where they cowered trembling with fear. So the search again proved unavailing.