“I’m not afraid,” he said, in a voice which was hardly quite steady. And as he spoke he threw up the window, and called out hurriedly, and in rather deferential tones—“Who are you down there?”
I don’t suppose Fraser ever did a pluckier thing than ask that question. We listened, all ears, for the reply. But none came. Only a faint moan, as the apparition swayed uneasily towards us, and even seemed to try to raise itself in our direction; but never a word we heard, and we closed the window again as much in the dark as to its identity as ever.
What could we do? We couldn’t go to bed with Bubbles’s or anybody’s ghost wandering about in the quadrangle below us, that was evident. But how were we to solve the mystery, unless indeed—
It was a terrible alternative, but the only one. We thought of it a good bit before any one proposed it. At last Fraser himself said—
“Who’s game to come down into the quad?”
Fraser was on his mettle, or he would never have been so mad. At first a dead silence was the only answer to his challenge. Then Lamb said—
“I don’t mind.”
If he didn’t mind, why should he nearly choke saying so? However, he broke the ice, and others followed. I considered myself as good a man as Lamb any day (it was only my own opinion), and I wasn’t going to be outdone by him now. So I volunteered. And one or two others who considered themselves as good as I volunteered too, until the forlorn hope numbered a dozen.
“Come along,” said Fraser, who had armed himself with a lighted candle and led the way.
I think those who stayed behind felt a little dismayed when the last of us glided from the door and left them behind.