The party was breaking up; some had retired; others were standing, bedroom candlesticks in their hands, exchanging a last word, when suddenly, out of the silence of the night, the melodious notes of a huntsman’s horn echoed through the room. Harold recalled the legend, and paused at the door, mute and wondering.
Jack and his father exchanged glances.
“Now which of you’s tryin’ to humbug us this year?” asked the old man, laughing, while Jack looked round and proceeded, as he said, to “count noses.”
This was a useless attempt, for half the party that had sat up to wait for the New Year had already disappeared.
Dick sprang to the window and threw it open, but the night was cloudy and dark.
Again came the notes of the horn, floating in through the open window, and almost at the same moment there was a sound of hoofs crunching the gravel of the drive as a dozen or more animals swept past at wild gallop.
“This is past a joke,” cried Jack. “I never heard of the old hunt materializing in any such way as this.”
They rushed to the front door—Jack, Mr. Connolly, all of them. Harold reached it first. Wrenching it open, he stood on the step, while the others crowded about him and peered out into the night. Only darkness, rendered mirker by the lights in the hall; and from the distance, fainter now, came the measured beat of the galloping hoofs.
No other sound? Yes, a long-drawn, quivering, piteous sigh; and as their eyes grew more accustomed to the night, out of the darkness something white shaped itself—something prone and helpless, lying on the gravel beneath the lowest step. They did not stop to speculate as to what it might be. With a single impulse, Jack and Harold sprang down, and between them they carried back into the hall the inanimate body of Polly Connolly.
Her eyes were closed and her face was as white as the muslin dress she wore. Clutched in her right hand was a hunting-horn belonging to Dick. It was evident that the girl had stolen out unobserved to reproduce—perhaps for the visitor’s benefit—the legendary notes of the phantom huntsman. This was a favorite joke among the young Connollys, and scarcely a New-Year’s night passed that it was not practised by one or other of the large family; but what had occurred to-night? Whence came those galloping hoofs, and what was the explanation of Polly’s condition?