As Nathalie was hurrying from the dressing-room, glad that she was through her long-anticipated Stunt, and doubly glad that it had been a success, her name was called. She turned to see Helen, who, with an anxious face, was peering from the adjoining dressing room.
“Oh, has anything gone wrong?” demanded Nathalie hastening to the door.
“I should say!” exclaimed Helen with woebegone countenance, “I have left my gun at home, and I must have it. Oh, I can’t imagine how I could have been so careless! Can’t you get some one to go and get it for me? Tell them to hurry, for my scene goes on in ten minutes.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” sympathized Nathalie, “tell me where to find it, quick, and I’ll get some one.”
“It is in the hall just behind the rack! Do hurry, Nat, I’m just about wild!”
Nathalie darted away; but alas, she could not find any one who could go at that moment, every one had some important duty to perform just then and there. Even the Scouts, who were always so ready to help the girls, were missing. “Oh, it is too bad!” bemoaned the girl. Presently her eyes lighted and in another instant she had flown up the stairs, seized her long cloak in the dressing-room, and then sped down the steps into the garden, and out into the street.
Ten minutes, that meant she would have to run every step of the way to get that gun there in time. So with the lightness of a bird she darted down one street, up another, and then—her heart gave a great leap as she came to the long, lonely stretch of road skirting the cemetery of the old Presbyterian church. But on she flew, hardly daring to cast her eyes towards the tall tombstones that gleamed at her with ghostly whiteness from the ghoulish shadows cast by the waving branches of the trees above them.
No, she was not afraid of ghosts, but she suddenly remembered a story she had heard as a little child, of a young girl who had been waylaid and killed by a man in a cemetery one dark night. Fiddle! she was not going to be afraid of a mere story, so with a snatch of melody on her lips she kept bravely on and soon left behind her the marble records of the dead. It did not take but a minute to ring the bell, tell Helen’s aunt what she wanted, then grab the gun and start off on her return journey.
Oh, she did hate to have to go by that old graveyard, she would take the other way around; but no, that would take twice the time and she must hurry! So nerving up her courage she ran on with the firm determination to play soldier, and level her musket if any one assailed her.
As she neared the cemetery her breath gave out, and instead of running by this danger post she had to walk every step. Determined not to look in the direction of these ghostly reminders of the past, she pushed resolutely on. She had almost reached the end of the long fence when the sudden snap of a twig, followed by a rustling noise caused her heart to pause in its beating. A scream escaped her quivering lips, for there in the bright radiance that fell like a silver veil over all objects she saw the figure of a man rise from one of the tombstones near the fence and come towards her!