Wandering Ghosts

id, as if it had been suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. Sir Hugh's face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawn skin-tight over a wooden mask, in which

s brain. His son stood beside him, tall, white and delicate as an angel in a primitive picture; and though there was deep distress in his violet eyes as he looked at his father's face, he felt the shadow of that sickening smile stealing across his own lips and parting them and drawing them against his will. And it was like a bad dream, for he tried not to smile and smiled the more. Beside him, strangely like him in her wan, angelic beauty, with the same shadowy golden hair, the same sa

ees, "if you have made up your mind to be married, I cannot hinder you,

aimed Gabriel

hen I am dead, though there is a very good reason why you had better not-why you had bett

sked Evelyn in a

e was a long pause. "Two gone," he said, his voice lowering strangely, "and two mo

e swollen lids; and the lurid cloud passed from the westering sun, so that the earth was green again an

breath, as though some sudden danger had been passed. They laid their hands each in the other's, and their strangely-like eyes met in a long loo

Evelyn at last. "He will

answered Gabriel, "let

eal echo it should repeat everything and not give back a phrase here and there, now speaking, now silent. But Nurse Macdonal

d quite softly, and Evely

ho," said Gabriel,

uilt across the end of the east wing. It was very still, not a breath stirred, and there was no sound

hand nervously, and speaking as if she dreaded to dist

Gabriel's sad ey

they are just under our feet here in the north vault outside the cha

bury my father, and me. They say a

ries!" Evelyn nestled nearer to her companion, graspin

old in an iron coffin with heavy locks, and they put it in the north vault. But ever afterwards, whenever the vault was opened to bury another of

h smiles?" Ev

Of course I never saw it, and the vault has not been o

you--" Evelyn stopped, and her be

h his secret, whatever it is." Gabriel s

arry-not that he forbade it-but he said it so strangely, and he smiled-ugh!" Her small white teeth chattered with fe

a low, nervous voice. "Nurse M

hat did

ar. Come, it is growing chilly." He rose, but Evelyn held his h

ed, just the same-Gabr

e. But while my father is so

now!" cried Evelyn in sudden distress. "I know t

ing s

thi

Gabriel Ockram, as she

understood, for they were innocent and young. Yet she drew him to her by her lightest touch, as a sensitive plant shivers and waves its thin leaves, and bends and closes softly upon what it wants; and he let himself be dra

oved in a strange

waking," h

it will have already turned into death, so sof

y came nearer. It was as if they had thoughts in their red

again, very low, and her

hen," murmure