“Nobody had used the place, even in wartime, until our outfit was billeted at Is-Sur-Tille. That ghost story of a dead bride begging some one to comb her hair had kept the Frenchies off the place. But Captain Bott was a hard-boiled guy.
“We went into the house late one afternoon, Captain Bott and me. He led the way into the kitchen and through the first floor into a large hall, where the stairs went up to the floor above. Dust was over everything. The only room in the house that looked at all as though it had been occupied in years was that bedroom upstairs where, they had told us, the bride had slept and died. We recognized it because it was the only room in the house where the door was shut.
“We opened it—that is, Captain Bott did—and went in. I stood in the doorway until he swore at me and ordered me to follow him in. The room smelled moldy. It smelled dead. It was a fine room for a ghost. It was dark in there, but gradually my eyes got accustomed to the gloom enough to make out that there was a bed in it. On the captain’s orders, I went to the window to open it for light, but I had to break the rusty hinges of the outside shutters before I could loosen them.
“At the court martial inquiry they wouldn’t believe me when I said that was the only reason I went into the room, and on the captain’s orders.
“The room was on the north side of the house and the sun was setting, so opening the window didn’t help much. There was pillows and a mattress and sheets—yellow sheets, yellow with age—on the bed. The chairs seemed all in confusion. There was another door in the room, probably leading to a closet. It was closed.
“Captain Bott went over and felt of the mattress and patted the pillows—the pillows on which they had said the bride’s head, nestled in its mass of copper-colored hair, had rested when she died. Captain Bott was hard-boiled, like I just said. He didn’t believe in ghosts.
“He said it was the best shakedown he’d seen in weeks.
“‘I’ll damned soon get a good night’s rest,’ he said.
“And he ordered me to go for some candles and his stuff; and, when I got back, I was to clear the place up. I went. I was glad to go. But I hated like hell to return.”