The blackness of the wood gave place to the starlit darkness of the night. They were about to pass out into the open when suddenly Alice’s horse came to a frightened stand. For an instant the mare swerved, then she reared and turned back whence she had come. Prudence checked her horse and looked for what had frightened the other animal.
A sight so weird presented itself that she suddenly raised one hand to her face and covered her eyes in nervous terror. Alice had regained the mastery of her animal and now drew up alongside the other. She looked, and the sharp catching of her breath told of what she saw. Suddenly she gripped Prudence’s arm and drew the girl’s hand from before her face.
“Keep quiet, Prue,” she whispered. “What is this place?”
“The Owl Hoot graveyard. This is the Haunted Hill.”
“And those?” Alice was pointing fearfully towards the clearing.
“Are–––Oh, come away, I can’t stand it.”
But neither girl made a move to go. Their eyes were fixed in a gaze of burning fascination upon the scene before them. Dark, almost black, the surrounding woods threw up in relief the clearing lit by the stars. But even so the scene was indistinct and uncertain. A low broken fence surrounded a small patch of ground, in the middle of which stood a ruined log-hut. Round the centre were scattered half-a-dozen or more tumbled wooden crosses, planted each in the centre of an elongated mound of earth. Here 179 and there a slab of stone marked the grave of some dead-and-gone resident of Owl Hoot, and a few shrubs had sprung up as though to further indicate these obscure monuments. But it was not these things which had filled the spectators with such horror. It was the crowd of silent flitting figures that seemed to come from out of one of the stone-marked graves, and pass, in regular procession, in amongst the ruins of the log-hut, and there disappear. To the girls’ distorted fancy they seemed to be shrouded human forms. Their faces were hidden by reason of their heads being bent forward under the pressure of some strange burden which rested on their shoulders. Forty of these gruesome phantoms rose from out of the ground and passed before their wildly-staring eyes and disappeared amidst the ruins. Not a sound was made by their swift-treading feet. They seemed to float over the ground. Then all became still again. Nothing moved, nor was there even the rustle of a leaf upon the boughs above. The stars twinkled brightly, and the calm of the night was undisturbed. Alice’s grip fell from her companion’s arm. Her horse reared and plunged, then, taking the bit between its teeth, it set off down the hill in the direction of Iredale’s house. The light which had burned in one of the windows had suddenly gone out, and there was nothing now to indicate the way, but the mare made no mistake. Prudence gave her horse its head and followed in hot pursuit.
Both animals came to a stand before the door of the barn behind the house, where, to the girls’ joy, they found the ferret-faced Chintz apparently awaiting them.
Alice was almost in a fainting condition, but Prudence was more self-possessed. She merely told the little man that they had lost their way, and asked his assistance to guide them out of the valley to where the trail to Loon Dyke Farm began. Such was the unexpected ending of their picnic.