“It’s quite likely,” he responded; “mostly the women that do come here look sad, and many of them keep their vails down. However, it’s my impression there hasn’t no child of that age been past here, lately. I noticed one going in about two o’clock, and if it’s that one, she hasn’t come out yet.”
So while Mr. Burton sat in the shop in Court street keeping watch, I sat at the gates of Greenwood; but no Leesy Sullivan came forth; and when the gates were closed for the night, I was obliged to go away disappointed.
The girl began to grow some elusive phantom in my mind. I could almost doubt that there was any such creature, with black, wild eyes and hectic cheeks, whom I was pursuing; whom I chanced upon in strange places, at unexpected times, but could never find when I sought her—who seemed to blend herself in this unwarrantable way with the tragedy which wrung some other hearts. What had she to do with Henry’s grave? A feeling of dislike, of mortal aversion, grew upon me—I could not pity her any more—this dark spirit who, having perchance wrought this irremediable woe, could not now sink into the depths where she belonged, but must haunt and hover on the edges of my trouble, fretting me to follow her, only to mock and elude.
Before leaving the cemetery I offered two policemen a hundred dollars if they should succeed in detaining the woman and child whose description I gave them, until word could be sent to the office of the detective-police; and I left them, with another on guard at the gates, perambulating the grounds, peering into vaults and ghostly places in search of her. When I got out at the house on Court street, I found my friend quite tired of eating chestnuts and talking to the little man behind the counter.
“Well,” said he, “the potatoes will be roasted to death before their owner returns. We have been led another wild-goose chase.”
“I have seen her,” I answered.
“What?”
“And lost her. I believe she is a little snaky, she has such a slippery way with her.”
“Tut! tut! so has a frightened deer! But how did it happen?”
I told him, and he was quite downcast at the unlucky fortune which had sent me to the cemetery at that particular time. It was evident that she had seen me, and was afraid to return to this new retreat, for fear she was again tracked.