The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"But all the dust that is upon you?" asked Sister Phoeby. "Did the Grey Friar do that?"

In one sense yes, for he had caused it, was the substance of Miss Hallet's answer. The terror he gave her was so great that she had fallen flat down in the dusty road.

In half a minute after Miss Hallet's shriek and fall, as related in the last chapter, Jane had run up to her. The impression upon Miss Hallet's mind was that Jane had come up from behind her, not from before her; but Jane seemed to intimate that she had come back from Chapel Lane; and Miss Hallet's perceptions were not in a state to be trusted just then. "What brings you here, aunt?--what are you doing up here?--what's the matter?" asked Jane, essaying to raise her. "Nay," said Miss Hallet, when she could get some words out for fright, "the question is, what brings you here?" "I," said Jane; "why I was only running to the Hutt, to give Commodore Teague the muffetees I have been knitting for him," and out of Jane's pocket came the said muffetees, of a bright plum-colour, in proof of the assertion; though it might be true or it might not. "Has it gone?" faintly asked Miss Hallet. "Has what gone, aunt?" "The Grey Friar. It appeared to me at that window, and down I fell: my limbs failed me." "There--there is a faint light," said Jane, looking up for the first time. "Oh, aunt!" Jane's teeth began to chatter. Miss Hallet, in the extreme sense of terror, and not daring to get up, took a roll or two down the hill in the dust: anything to get away from that dreadful Keep. But it bumped and bruised her: she was no longer young; not to speak of the damage to her clothes, of which she was always careful. So with Jane's help she managed to get upon her feet, and reach the Nunnery somehow; where, shrieking in very nervousness, she seized upon the bell, and pulled it incessantly until admitted, as though her arm were worked by steam.

"My legs failed me," gasped Miss Hallet, explaining now to the Sisters: "I dropped like a stone in the road, and rolled there in the dust. It was an awful sight," she added, drawing unconsciously on the terrors of her imagination: "a bluish, greenish kind of light at first; and then a most dreadful, ghostly apparition with a lamp, or soft flame of some kind, in its outstretched arm. I wonder I did not die."

Sister Mildred unlocked a cupboard, and produced a bottle of cordial, a recent present from Mrs. Bent: a little of which she administered to the terrified nervous woman. Miss Hallet swallowed it in gulps. There was no end of confused chattering: a ghost is so exciting a subject to discuss, especially when it has been just seen. Sister Ann compared the present description of the Grey Friar with that which she and Sister Rachel had witnessed, not so long before, and declared the two to tally in every particular. Trembling Sister Judith added her personal testimony. Altogether there had not been so much noise and bustle within the peaceful walls of the Nunnery since that same eventful night, whose doings had been crowned by the arrival of poor little Polly Gleeson with her burns. In the midst of it an idea occurred to Sister Mildred.

"But what brought you up by the Friar's Keep at night, Miss Hallet?" she asked. "It is a lonely road: nobody takes it by choice."

Miss Hallet made no answer. She was gasping again.

"I dare say she was going to see the coastguardsman's wife, sick Emma Mann," spoke Sister Phoeby heartily. "Don't tease her." And Miss Hallet, catching at the suggestion in her extremity, gave Sister Phoeby a nod of acquiescence. It went against the grain to do so, for she was integrity itself, but she would not have these ladies know the truth for the world.

"And Jane had ran on to take the mittens to the Commodore, so that you were alone," said Sister Mildred, following out probabilities in her own mind, and nodding pleasantly to Miss Hallet. "I see. Dear me! What a dreadful thing this apparition is!--what will become of us all? I used not to believe in it much."

"Well, you see people have gone past the Keep at night lately more than they used to: I'm sure one or another seems always to be passing by it," remarked Sister Ann sensibly. "We should hear nothing about it now but for that."