"Ghosts?" queried Ruth, escaping to Maudlin's door, and peeping gingerly in.
Shadows on the wall.
"Ay, marry, ghosts; black-sheeted ghosts all over the walls," said Maudlin, pointing to the restless shadows cast by the quivering flame of Ruth's lamp. "Look at 'em bobbin' about, and a draught to cut a body's head off! Have you got a pane open in there, child?"
Doubtless that explained the inconvenience; for Ruth had opened the pane in order to catch the faintest sound that might disturb the silence of the night.
"Then shut it," went on Maudlin, as Ruth owned to the fact, "shut it, if you don't want your poor old nurse to catch her death o' rheumatics. A mighty fine sort of a night to be havin' casements open, this! What's gone, I wonder, of all yesterday's sunshine? 'Tis as cold as Candlemas. Well they may say:—
"'Cast ne'er a clout
Till May be out.'
If—hark! what's that, child?"
"I heard nothing," answered Ruth, listening with all her ears, "nothing but the rain," she added, as a smart sleety shower rattled against the glass.
The creak of the drawbridge.
"So 'tis—at last. There wasn't a joint of all my poor old bones that didn't tell me that was comin'. But 'twasn't that I heard. 'Twas—hush! There 'tis again! The clank o' the draw-bridge chains! or I'll eat my head off."