"No; he was a little startled at first, but he allowed I could not do otherwise. Poor fellow! He is anxious to see you now. If you will get your overcoat, you will find him here when you return."
Mr. Stanford ran upstairs in a hurry, and returned in fur cap and overcoat in ten minutes. A young man, tall and slender, but pale to ghastliness, with haggard cheeks and hollow eyes, stood, wrapped in a long cloak, beside the Captain. He had been handsome, you could see, even through that bloodless pallor, and there was a look in his great blue eyes that startlingly reminded you of Kate.
"You two know each other already," said the Captain. "I claim you both as sons."
Reginald grasped Harry Danton's extended hand, and shook it heartily.
"Being brothers, I trust we shall soon be better acquainted," he said. "I am to supply Kate's place to-night in the tamarack walk. I trust no loiterers will see us."
"I trust not," said Harry, with an apprehensive shiver. "I have been seen by so many, and have frightened so many that I begin to dread leaving my room night or day."
"There is nothing to dread, I fancy," said Stanford, cheerfully, as they passed out, and down the steps. "They take you for a ghost, you know. Let them keep on thinking so, and you are all right. You have given Danton Hall all it wanted to make it perfect—it is a haunted house."
"It is haunted," said his companion, gloomily. "What am I better than any other evil spirit? Oh, Heaven!" he cried, passionately, "the horror of the life I lead! Shut up in the prison I dare not leave, haunted night and day by the vision of that murdered man, every hope and blessing that life holds gone forever! I feel sometimes as though I were going mad!"
He lifted his cap and let the chill night wind cool his burning forehead. There was a long, blank pause. When Reginald Stanford spoke, his voice was low and subdued.
"Are you quite certain the man you shot was shot dead? You hardly waited to see, of course; and how are you to tell positively the wound was fatal?"