Part 34

"Go?" she said. "Where?"

"My aunt lives at Seven Oaks, less than an hour from here by train. You can stay there till your father comes to his reason."

"It's quite like father never to come to his reason," she reflected. "Then I should have to be self-supporting. Of course, I should appreciate employment in a candy shop--I think I know all the principal kinds."

"Will you go?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied simply, "I'll go. But how can I get away from here?"

"To-night," I said, "is Christmas Eve, when Pierrepont the Ghost is supposed to walk along the wall--right under this window. You don't believe that fairy story, do you?"

"No."

"Neither do I. But can't you see? The haunted wall begins at my window on one end of the castle and ends at your window on the other. The bars of your cell, I see, are nearly all loose."

"Yes," she laughed, "I pried them out with a pair of scissors."

I could hear Hobson's voice across the court giving orders to servants.

"Your father's coming. Remember to-night," I whispered.

"Midnight," she said softly, smiling out at me. I could have faced flocks and flocks of dragons for her at that moment. The old man was coming nearer. I swung to the ground and escaped into a ruined court.

Well, the hours that followed were anxious and busy for me. I worked in the glamour of romance like a soldier about to do some particularly brave and foolish thing. From the window of my room I looked down on the narrow, giddy wall below. It was a brave and foolish thing. Among the rubbish in an old armory I found a coil of stout rope, forty or fifty feet of it. This I smuggled away. From a remote hall I borrowed a Crusader's helmet and spent the balance of the afternoon in my room practicing with a sheet across my shoulders, shroud-fashion.

We dined grandly at eight, the old man and I. He drank thirstily and chatted about the ghost, as you might discuss the chances in a coming athletic event. After what seemed an age he looked at his watch and cried: "Whillikens! Eleven o'clock already! Well, I'll be going up to watch from the haunted room. I think, Jeff, that you'll bring me luck to-night."

"I am sure I shall!" I answered sardonically, as he departed.

Three quarters of an hour later, wearing the Crusader's helmet and swathed in a bedsheet, I let myself down from the window to the haunted wall below. It was moonlight, bitter cold as I crouched on the wall, waiting for the stroke of twelve, when I should act the spook and walk along that precarious ledge to rescue Anita.

The "haunted wall," I observed from where I stood, was shaped like an irregular crescent, being in plain view of Hobson's "haunted room" at the middle, but not so at its north and south ends, where my chamber and Anita's tower were respectively situated. I pulled out my watch from under my winding-sheet. Three minutes of twelve. I drew down the vizor of my helmet and gathered up my cerements preparatory to walking the hundred feet of wall which would bring me in sight of the haunted room where old Hobson kept his vigil. Two minutes, one minute I waited, when--I suddenly realized I was not alone.

A man wearing a long cloak and a feather in his cap was coming toward me along the moonlit masonry. Aha! So I was not the only masquerading swain calling on the captive princess in the prison tower. A jealous pang shot through me as I realized this.

The man was within twenty feet of me, when I noticed something. He was not walking on the wall. He was walking on air, three or four feet above the wall. Nearer and nearer came the man--the Thing--now into the light of the moon, whose beams seemed to strike through his misty tissue like the thrust of a sword. I was horribly scared. My knees loosened under me, and I clutched the vines at my back to save me from falling into the moat below. Now I could see his face, and somehow fear seemed to leave me. His expression was so young and human.

"Ghost of the Pierrepont," I thought, "whether you walk in shadow or in light, you lived among a race of Men!"

His noble, pallid face seemed to burn with its own pale light, but his eyes were in darkness. He was now within two yards of me. I could see the dagger at his belt. I could see the gory cut on his forehead. I attempted to speak, but my voice creaked like a rusty hinge. He neither heeded nor saw me; and when he came to the spot where I stood, he did not turn out for me. He walked through me! And when next I saw him he was a few feet beyond me, standing in mid-air over the moat and gazing up at the high towers like one revisiting old scenes. Again he floated toward me and poised on the wall four feet from where I stood.

"What do you here to-night?" suddenly spoke, or seemed to speak, a voice that was like the echo of a silence.

No answer came from my frozen tongue. Yet I would gladly have spoken, because somehow I felt a great sympathy for this boyish spirit.

"It has been many earth-years," he said, "since I have walked these towers. And ah, cousin, it has been many miles that I have been called to-night to answer the summons of my race. And this fortress--what power has moved it overseas to this mad kingdom? Magic!"

His eyes seemed suddenly to blaze through the shadows.

"Cousin," he again spoke, "it is to you that I come from my far-off English tomb. It was your need called me. It is no pious deed brings you to this wall to-night. You are planning to pillage these towers unworthily, even as I did yesterday. Death was my portion, and broken hearts to the father I wronged and the girl I sought."

"But it is the father wrongs the girl here," I heard myself saying.

"He who rules these towers to-day is of stern mind but loving heart," said the ghost. "Patience. By the Star that redeems the world, love should not be won to-night by stealth, but by--love."