My nervous dread redoubled as I neared Chicago, and it was as much as I could do, when the train reached Kalamazoo, to keep from turning back. And the event showed that I suffered with only too much reason, for, on my arrival at the home of the institution, I found it closed. The door was locked, the shades pulled down, the building the perfect picture of gloom. Miss Brockton, I was informed, was in a lunatic-asylum, and two hundred and eighty-three young girls, ranging from fourteen to twenty years of age, had been returned to their parents, the hair of every mother's daughter of them blanched white as the driven snow. No one knew, my informant said, exactly what had occurred at the academy, but the fact that was plain to all was that, some two weeks previous to my coming, the school had retired at the usual hour one night, in the very zenith of a happy prosperity, and gathered at breakfast the next morning to find itself wrecked, and bearing the outward semblance of a home for indigent old ladies. No one, from Miss Brockton herself to the youngest pupil, could give a coherent account of what had turned them all gray in a single night, and brought the furrows of age to cheeks both old and young, nor could any inducement be held out to any of the pupils to pass another night within those walls. They one and all fled madly back to their homes, and Miss Brockton's attempted explanation was so incredible that, protesting her sanity, she was nevertheless placed under restraint, pending a full investigation of the incident. She had, I was informed, asserted that some sixty ghosts of most terrible aspect had paraded through the house between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., howling and shrieking and threatening the occupants in a most terrifying fashion. At their head marched a spectre brass-band of twenty-four pieces, grinding out with horrid contortions and grimaces the most awful discords imaginable—discords, indeed, Miss Brockton had said, alongside of which those of the most grossly material German street band in creation became melodies of soothing sweetness. The spectre rabble to the rear bore transparencies, upon which were painted such legends as, "Hail to Jones, our beloved Chief!" "Strike One, Strike All!" and, "Down with Hawkins, the Grinder of Ghosts!" This last caused my heart to sink still lower, for Hawkins was the name I had given the vision at Florence, and I now understood all. It was only too manifest that I was the cause of the undoing of these innocents.
My lie to Jones had brought this disaster upon the Brockton Academy. The dreadfulness of it appalled me, and I turned away, sick at heart, only to find myself face to face with the horrid Jones, grinning like the cad he had proved himself.
"Well, you have done it," I cried, trembling with rage. "I hope you are proud of yourself, venting your spite on an innocent woman and two hundred and eighty-three defenceless girls."
He laughed.
"It was a pretty successful haunt," he said; "and possibly, now that Mrs. Hawkins and your daughters—"
"Who?" I cried. "Mrs. What, and my which?"
"Your wife and children," he replied. "Now that the local chapter has attended to them, maybe you'll apologize to me for your boorish behavior at Florence."
"Those people were nothing to me," said I. "That was a boarding-school you have driven crazy. I was merely coming here to lecture—"
I immediately perceived my mistake. He could now easily discover my identity.
"Oho!" said he, with a broad, grim smile. "Then you lied to me at Florence, and you are not Hawkins, but the man they call the spook Boswell among us?"