As they advanced a step, I did the same.
‘What noise was that?’ asked one of them quickly.
‘Don’t be a fool. There was no noise.’
‘I tell you there was.—Where’s the glim?’
But the lightning was quicker than the bull’s-eye. It came, smiting the darkness, and flooding the corridor with the blinding intensity of its glare. Then I saw the men, and the men saw me, but darkness had hidden us from each other again before they had time to make sure that their eyes had not deceived them.
One of them gave a gasp and whispered to his mate: ‘What was that tall, white thing at the end of the passage? Seemed to me like a ghost.’
‘Ghost be dashed! There ain’t no such things.—Here’s the glim. We’ll soon see what it is.’ As he spoke, the light of his bull’s-eye lantern was turned full upon me.
I advanced a couple of paces, and the men fell back in speechless surprise and terror. I have often tried since to picture to myself the appearance I must have presented when seen at such a moment and by that uncertain light, with my ghastly, death-like face, my dilated eyes, my black, snake-like locks, my tall figure all in white, and with one extended arm and finger pointed direct at the men. I cannot wonder at their fright.
At this juncture came another flash, and a terrible peal of thunder startled the air and shook the house. At the very instant, impelled thereto by something within me that I was powerless to control, I burst into a wild peal of maniacal, blood-curdling laughter. One step nearer I advanced; but that was enough. With a loud yell of terror, the men turned and fled by the way they had come. I heard a crash of shattered glass; and after that, I remember nothing more till I came to my senses, to find Bessie supporting my head on her lap and pressing her smelling-salts to my nose.
But John’s ninety pounds were saved, and it is hardly necessary to add that Dethel the ex-gardener was never seen in those parts again.