"You go on," said Ella, as she wished Mrs. Toynbee goodnight. "I want to gather up my work first: I forgot to take it upstairs this afternoon."
It took her a minute or two to do this. As she was crossing the hall, candle and other things in hand, she was startled by hearing a noise in the household regions. It sounded like the back-door being unlocked. Yes! and now it was burst open with a bang, and a voice that was certainly old Dorothy's gave vent to a fearful cry. Believing that everybody was in bed, Miss Winter felt considerable surprise. Dropping the odds and ends of work, she ran with her candle and found Dorothy gasping in a chair before the embers of the kitchen fire.
With many moans and sobs, Dorothy related what she had seen.
"But that I sprang aside from its path, Miss Ella, it would have gone right over me," she reiterated, her teeth chattering; "it made as if it wanted to. Straight, straight on it came, turning neither to the right nor the left. Oh, it was an awful sight!"
In spite of herself, Ella could not repress a shudder. The story of the apparition of the black coach and its headless horses was not unknown to her.
"And now, Miss Ella, there'll be a death in the house before long," shivered the woman. "It is a safe and sure warning of it--and oh, which of us is it to be?"
To attempt to combat this, would have been a hopeless task: Dorothy had believed in it as long as she had believed in anything. Miss Winter contented herself with soothing her in the best way she could, and, when the old woman had in some measure recovered from her fright, in obtaining a promise from her not to speak to anyone of what she had seen that night.
But that was probably too much to expect of Dorothy.