CHAPTER LXIV.
AN AMBUSCADE
Gilroyd was awfully slow, and even the town of Saxton dull. Cricket was quite over. There was no football there. William Maubray used to play at the ancient game of quoits with Arthur Jones, Esq., the Saxton attorney, who was a little huffy when he lost, and very positive on points of play; but on the whole a good fellow. Sometimes in the smoking-room, under the reading-room, he and Doctor Drake played clattering games of backgammon, with sixpenny stakes, and called their throws loudly, and crowed ungenerously when they won.
But these gaieties and dissipations failed to restore William altogether to his pristine serenity. Although he had been now for four nights quite unmolested, he could not trust Gilroyd. It was a haunted house, and he the sport of a spirit. The place was bewitched, but so, unhappily, was the man. His visit to the Rectory proved that change of place could not deliver him. He was watched, and made to feel that his liberty was gone.
Violet Darkwell was not to return to the Rectory for a week or more, and William called on Doctor Wagget, looking ill, and unquestionably in miserable spirits. To the rector he had confessed something vaguely of his being in love, and cherishing hopes contrary to the terms which poor Aunt Dinah had sought to impose upon him.
A few nights later, emboldened by his long respite, he had written some stanzas, addressed to the young lady’s carte de visite, expressive of his hopes, and in the morning he had found his desk in his bed-room, though he had left it in the drawing-room, and his bed-room door was as usual locked. His desk was not open, nor was there any sign of the papers having been disturbed, but the verses he had that night written had been taken out and torn into small pieces, which were strewn on top of the desk.
Since then he had not had a single quiet night, and the last night was the oddest, and in this respect the most unpleasant, that they had set the servants talking.
“Tom, he’s a very steady old fellow, you know,” related William, “waked me up last night at about two o’clock. I called through the door not knowing but that it might be something.”