As Barbara started up the long staircase she felt lonely. The hall below looked vast and dark. Only a dim light was burning and every door was closed. Emerging from the shadows around the staircase she might have been a ghost of one of the early Ten Eycks in her old-fashioned peach-colored silk, with its full trailing skirt and pointed bodice. She hurried a little and wished she had got over the long space of hall which lay between her and her room; but she had scarcely taken a dozen steps before the door behind her opened. She stopped and looked back, thinking perhaps it was one of the servants waiting to put out the lights.
Standing in the doorway was a very old man. He carried a candle in one hand, and was peering at her in the darkness with that same expression of wonder and surprise on his face that she had remembered to have seen before, for this was their third encounter, once in the woods, once in the library, and now.
“Barbara! Barbara Thurston!” he called in a quavering voice. “I have been waiting for you so long, so many years. I am old now and you are still young.” He stretched out his arms and came toward her.
Bab flew and almost ran into José, who opened his door at that moment. When they recovered themselves the old man was gone.
“Which way did he go?” asked José.
Bab pointed to the door without speaking, and, still trembling from fright, burst into her own room, where a strange scene was taking place. Three high-backed chairs were arranged in a row. Ruth in a dressing gown was crouching behind them, while Mollie and Grace sat hand in hand on the bed, giving little gasps of excitement and horror.
“This is the clump of bushes,” Ruth was saying, “and the three fights took place here and here, and here,” she went on, marking the spots with her toe. “Stephen and his man, who was none other than the giant tramp, fought straight out from the shoulder like this,” and she hit the air furiously with her doubled fists. “Then came Alfred and his friend. They didn’t hit. They gripped and rolled over and over in the dust. And last of all, poor Jimmie, who, in five minutes, lay like a warrior taking his rest.”
“Why, Ruth Stuart,” interrupted Bab, “I thought we were not to tell.”
“Sh-h! Don’t make so much noise, Bab. Aunt Sallie thinks we were safe in bed long ago. I’m not betraying confidence. Stephen told me I could tell Mollie and Grace if he could tell Martin. But, Bab, dear, what is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?”
“Yes,” replied Bab, “or rather the next thing to one. Really, girls, I’m getting more than my fair share this time. Ruth was in the fight, of course, but none of you have seen the old man who haunts the place, and I have seen him three times. He seems to be a perfectly harmless old man, but it does give one a start to meet him at midnight in a dark hall.”