'She is dead!' I thought. 'Mayhap the clawed things out of the sea have devoured her, even as they took Mary Torrance!'
But I heard the Dominie say under his breath, 'It is she! It is she!'
For in the moment of terror, when the soul is unmanned, everyone hears with his own ears and sees with his own eyes, according to his own heart's fantasy.
But the figure came ever closer to us, stepping daintily and surely in the dim light. Again I heard the voice which had spoken to me from the sea, and at the sound my very bones quaked within me.
'Launcelot—Launcelot Kennedy!' it said.
And for a long moment the figure stood still as if waiting for an answer. But my voice was shut dumbly within me. The Dominie stood up.
'Art thou the spirit of Mary Torrance, or a deceiving fiend of hell that has taken her shape? Answer me, or I fire!'
And the Dominie held out his pistol to the white-sheeted ghost, which even then appeared to me a mightily vain thing, for how can a spirit fear these things which are only deadly to flesh and bone?
'I have come to see Launcelot Kennedy,' answered the voice, and it appeared awful and terrible to me beyond the power of words. I could not so much as fix my mind on a prayer, though I knew several well enough. 'I have come to seek Launce Kennedy. Is he within?' said the voice.
'What would you with him? He is no concern of yours,' said the Dominie.