Half an hour later a company of spectres invaded the halls and drawing room of Pine Lodge. There were silent ghosts and giggling ghosts, and a roly-poly ghost, who bumped against a thin ghost and knocked him flat and the thin ghost cried out:
“Oh, shades of departed Jumbo, don’t sit on me!”
Then all the ghosts laughed and one ghost danced a jig that had the shadow of a resemblance to the Fishers’ Horn Pipe.
Presently there was a long and mournful trumpet call from up in the very top of the house and a portly ghost who seemed to be holding up a train under her white cotton shroud said:
“Now, my dear spirits, we are all to go up, if you will be good enough to follow me,” and the whole troop of ghosts began moving in a spectral body up the front staircase.
There was a second long-drawn-out and despairing trump, and the phantom beckoned them to hurry up, with her plump, pretty hand, and remarked:
“My darling Percival is so impatient.”
Up the next staircase they trooped and finally up a narrow flight, at the top of which hung a black curtain with cabalistic signs painted on it in bright red.
Once past the curtain and there was a gasp of surprise and wonder. The great attic of Pine Lodge, which stretched over the entire house, had been transformed into a spirit dance hall. From the ceiling hung pumpkin jack-o-lanterns of every size. Plates of salt and alcohol were burning about the room, giving a ghastly greenish look to the picture. An old witch dressed in black, with a long broomstick, was stationed by a cauldron of melted lead, placed on a charcoal stove.
Repeating a cabalistic verse with incredible rapidity, which sounded something like: