The hood fell back, and in the dim starlight Captain Lennox could just make out the face of a woman, young and pale, her eyes cast pleadingly up to his own.
"Oh, sir, don't hold me!--don't keep me!" was the answer, given in a tone of wailing entreaty, though the voice was one of singular sweetness. "Please let me go!"
"What are you doing here?" he reiterated, still keeping his hold upon her. "What were you peeping at the house for?"
"I am looking for Katherine," whispered the girl. "I come here often to look for her."
"For Katherine!--and who is Katherine?" asked Captain Lennox. But the next moment he remembered the name, as being the one connected with that strange mystery that so puzzled Heron Dyke.
"For my sister," softly repeated the girl. "I do no harm, sir, in coming here to look for her."
"But, my good girl, she is not to be seen, you know; she never will be seen," he remonstrated, a shade of compassion in his tone.
"But I do see her," answered the girl, her voice dropped to so low a pitch that he could scarcely hear it. "I have seen her once or twice, sir; at her own window."
Perhaps Captain Lennox felt a little taken aback at the words. He did not answer.
"People say she must be dead; I know that," went on the speaker, in the same hushed tone. "Even mother says that it must be Katherine's ghost I see. But I think it is herself, sir. I think she is somewhere inside Heron Dyke."