The ghosts of their ancestors

by Weymer Jay Mills

he glimmering lantern which the serving-maid Betty carried seemed like a huge firefly come back to a land of blooms. Sometimes in dim alleyways it caught in her flapping garments, and her two mistresses were forced to cling together until they reached the next patch of moonlight. When their half-tasted dinner was finished, and the silver counted and locked in the cherry cabinet, Georgina commanded her sister to step over with her to the mansion. Jonathan never permitted the family vehicle to be brought out when the world was not looking, and his womenkind were used to tramping through the darkness. Julie was reluctant to go at first, but the other's anger flamed so high she could not help catching some of the sparks.

"Would you allow your niece to ruin her life by marrying a man who gains his livelihood playing a musical instrument? Methinks you have a fondness for hornpipers and such. There was Signor Succhi, our dancing-master, I recollect"—nodding her head—"he used to call you 'little peach-blossom'—his little peach-blossom!"

Julie smiled at Georgina's latest feat of memory; then she turned about and gazed into the dying embers. For a moment she stood beside a merry-eyed youth who dared her to prick the signor's silken calves. Did he really perfect their symmetry with cotton as was said, she wondered? Alas, that she was born timorous.

"Are your wits leaving you, Jerusalem?" continued the other—"you who wear Aunt Jane's hair locket and have been for years an ornament in the highest sphere of this city—now being ruined by Trentonians and other foreigners. Where is your boasted allegiance to those of your family who have gone before you?"

Threatened and cajoled by turns Miss Julie was led into the night. "The Snograss woman may have lied," came the consoling thought. She cheered herself with it hurrying through the snow.

Up Church Street they stumbled past huts and houses. Warm windows beckoned to them. Georgina had forgotten the mittens for her nieces. The scene at the Snograss House was uppermost in her mind. "What a sly minx Patricia is to have kept the disgraceful affair from us so long," she was thinking. "Could that skulking Juma have helped her? He knew enough to bamboozle one. There was a report that old Roberta Johnstone even read him novels." The boisterous wind, tossing the budding lilac branches about the statues in the Knickerbocker garden which the girl in the window-seat was watching, came shrieking out of unexpected openings and buffeted her aunts in the face.

Now they were entering the narrow passage that opened into Vesey Street. The tavern lights twinkled beyond, but drear and lonely the artery for cut-throats appeared.

Georgina, brave and intrepid, was still nursing her wrath when a mist came before her eyes. "I see! I feel queer!" she cried. Her companions were shaking like autumn leaves. "Oh, don't pause, sister!" squeaked terrified Julie, "here's where that picaroon in the black mask was wont to hide. A Dick Turpin may be concealed yonder!"

"Hist!" called Georgina, as if speaking to some vermin of the night. A shadowy mocking face was rising up before her. She began to tremble—where had she seen it? Yes, 'twas the face of the ancestress whose portrait Jonathan took down from the line of Knickerbockers in the parlor. "My nerves," she gasped. "Come, let us haste, you trembling fools!" Once in the driveway to the house she denied her fright. Betty was scolded for stumbling over a brier-bush. When the long flight of steps was reached, she rushed at them boldly. "Knock, Jerusalem," she commanded.