"Yes, it was true; and now she comes to me! Go away!" she cried, addressing something I could not see. "I cannot help you; why do you torment me! Ah!"—with a sigh of relief—"she has gone!" and she sank exhausted into a chair.
We had a long and memorable talk after that, which I will briefly summarize. My wife had not heard the groans that had been audible to me until their second repetition; then the sound that had seemed beside my ear came at the same instant close to hers, and her cry that joined with mine had been wrung from her by the sight of the apparition which on the instant presented itself to her. This was not the first time, however, that it had appeared:—it had closely followed upon the receipt of Deeming's letter the day before, and its cries of distress and appeals for help had been so agonizing that it was as much on that account as because of the plea of the murderer himself that she had decided to see Miss Rounsfell again.
The apparition did not reappear that day, and there was no recurrence of the wailing lamentations—but we were soon to have further experience of them for all that.
The storm spent itself during the late afternoon, and was succeeded by a beautiful evening. The wind was still high, and the sky filled with broken masses of clouds, through which the full moon waded heavily:—and as my wife and I descended the hill, soon after dinner, to the railway station on our way to keep an engagement to call upon the Consul-General of the United States at his residence at St. Kilda, we agreed that the night was just such a one as might inspire Doré in some one of his fantastic compositions. After the day's gruesome events we had hesitated about leaving our friend alone during our absence; but we finally united upon the opinion which my wife advanced, that as she seemed to be the sole object of the apparition's visit, he was not likely to be molested. So we left him (albeit with some misgiving) comfortably seated before the dining-room fire in a large easy-chair, and with his pipe and a new novel for company, and took our departure.
It was after midnight when we returned. The gale had blown itself out, and the moon looked down upon a world that seemed resting in sleep after the turmoil of the day. My wife went at once to her room to lay aside her outer garments and I repaired, with much curiosity and a little apprehension stirring me, to the dining-room.
I found our friend as we had left him, book in hand and with his smoked-out pipe lying on a table beside him. He was not alone, however—our two dogs—a wire-haired Scotch terrier and a fox-terrier—which I had as usual chained up for the night in their kennels at the back of the house, were dozing together on the hearth-rug.
"Hullo!" I exclaimed; "what are those dogs doing here? You know they are never allowed to come into the house."
"Well," our friend replied. "I felt lonely, and so I brought them in to keep me company."
"That's an odd idea," I rejoined. "I thought your book and pipe would be society enough. Besides, there is plenty of 'Scotch' and soda on the sideboard."