"In that corner. Let us have candles. I don't like the darkness when it gathers in corners and creeps along walls."
Uncle Joseph looked all round the room inquiringly; and smiled to himself as he took two candles from the cupboard and lighted them. "You are like the children," he said, playfully, while he pulled down the window-blind. "You are afraid of the dark."
Sarah did not appear to hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the corner of the room which she had pointed out the moment before. When he resumed his place by her side, she never looked round, but laid her hand on his arm, and said to him suddenly—
"Uncle! Do you believe that the dead can come back to this world, and follow the living every where, and see what they do in it?"
The old man started. "Sarah!" he said, "why do you talk so? Why do you ask me such a question?"
"Are there lonely hours," she went on, still never looking away from the corner, still not seeming to hear him, "when you are sometimes frightened without knowing why—frightened all over in an instant, from head to foot? Tell me, uncle, have you ever felt the cold steal round and round the roots of your hair, and crawl bit by bit down your back? I have felt that even in the summer. I have been out of doors, alone on a wide heath, in the heat and brightness of noon, and have felt as if chilly fingers were touching me—chilly, damp, softly creeping fingers. It says in the New Testament that the dead came once out of their graves, and went into the holy city. The dead! Have they rested, rested always, rested forever, since that time?"
Uncle Joseph's simple nature recoiled in bewilderment from the dark and daring speculations to which his niece's questions led. Without saying a word, he tried to draw away the arm which she still held; but the only result of the effort was to make her tighten her grasp, and bend forward in her chair so as to look closer still into the corner of the room.
"My mistress was dying," she said—"my mistress was very near her grave, when she made me take my oath on the Bible. She made me swear never to destroy the letter; and I did not destroy it. She made me swear not to take it away with me, if I left the house; and I did not take it away. She would have made me swear, for the third time, to give it to my master, but death was too quick for her—death stopped her from fastening that third oath on my conscience. But she threatened me, uncle, with the dead dampness on her forehead, and the dead whiteness on her cheeks—she threatened to come to me from the other world if I thwarted her—and I have thwarted her!"
She stopped, suddenly removed her hand from the old man's arm, and made a strange gesture with it toward the part of the room on which her eyes remained fixed. "Rest, mistress, rest," she whispered under her breath. "Is my master alive now? Rest, till the drowned rise. Tell him the Secret when the sea gives up her dead."
"Sarah! Sarah! you are changed—you are ill—you frighten me!" cried Uncle Joseph, starting to his feet.