"It had been driven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one against a portion of the old red wall in which its fall had made a gap. The fissure went down the garden trec to a little above the carth, and there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most of his past fears revived, he sat in his arbor-grown, quiet an old man, watching the people who came to sce it.
"They quickly began to come in such dangerous numbers that he closed his garden gate and refused to admit any more. But there were certain men of science who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, blight and murrain on them, and in an evil hour he let them in.
"They wanted to dig up therein by the roots, and closely examine it, and the earth about it. They offered money for it. They! men of science, whom he could have bought by the with a scratch of his pen! He showed them the garden gate gross, and
locked and barred it.
"But they were bent on doing that they wanted to do, and they bribed the old serving man-a thankless wretch who regularly complained when he received his wages, of being underpaid—and they stole into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the tree. He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of the house (the bride's chamber had been unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got up.
"He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air. It was found! They had that minute lighted on it. They were all bending over it. One of them said, "The skull is fractured" and another, "See here the bones" and another, "See here the clothes"; and then the first struck in again, and said, "A rusty billhook!"
20
WORLD FAMOUS OHIOST STORIES
"He was put under strict watch and could go nowhere without being followed. Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold. The circumstances were gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an appalling ingenuity. But, see justice of men, and how it was extended to him! He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in the bride's chamber. He who had carefully and expressly avoided imperiling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity!
"There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried: but the real one was chosen, and he was found guilty, and cast for death. Blood-thirsty wretches! They would have made him guilty of anything; so set they were upon having his life.
"His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged. I am he, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with face to the wall, a hundred years ago!" my
At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out. But the two fiery lines extending from the old man's eyes to his own kept him down, and he could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike two. No sooner had he heard the clock strike two than he saw before him two old men!
Two
The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire, each exactly like the other, each addressing him at precisely one and the same instant, each gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and the same head, with the same suffused expression around it. Two old men, differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.
"At what time," said the two old men, "did you arrive at the door below?"
"At six.
"And there were six old men upon the stairs!"
Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried to do it, the two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular number.
"I had been anatomized, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and rchang on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the bride's chamber was haunted. It was haunted, and I was there.
"We were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the floor. But I was speaker no more, and the one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, "Live!"
"The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the
window. Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave. He has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment, revealing to me by snatches in the pale lights and slaty shadows where he comes and goes, bareheaded-a billhook, standing edgewise in his hair. "In the bride's chamber, every night from midnight until dawn-one month in the year expected, as I am going to tell
you-he hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on the
floor, always approaching, never coming nearer, always visible,
as if by moonlight, whether the moon shines or not, always
saying from midnight until dawn, her one word, "Live!" "But in the month wherein I was forced out of this life this present month of thirty days—the bride's chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon. Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid. I am what you saw me when the clock struck that hour-one old man. At two in the morning, I am two old man. At three, I am three. By twelve at noon, I am twelve old man, one for every hundred per cent of old again. Every one of the twelve, with twelve at night, I, twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner At twelve at night, I, twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with twelve faces to the wall!
"When the bride's chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this punishment would never cease, until 1 could make its nature, and my story known to two living men together into the bride's chamber, year upon years. It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the bride's chamber at one in the morning, they would see me sitting in my chair
"At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought two men to try the adventure. I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I came there, as if the lightning blasted me into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them enter. One of them was a bold, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years younger. They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles. A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she had lighted it, the bold, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.
"He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the basket on the table before the fire-little knowing of me, in my appointed station on the heart, close to him-and filled the glasses and ate and drank. His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as he, though he was the leader. When they had taken supper, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.
"They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an abundance of subject in common. In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader's being always ready for any adventure. He replied
WAS IT A GHOST TELLING STORY.....
23
in these words: "Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing
else, I am afraid of myself."
"His companion, seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense? How?
"Why, thus," he returned, "Here is a ghost to be disproved Well! I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my sense might play with me if they had me to themselves. But, in company with another man, and especially with you, Dick, I would consent to outface all the ghosts that were ever told in the universe."
"I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance tonight," said the other.
"Of so much", rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken yet, "that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone." "It was within a few minutes of one. The head of the younger
man had dropped when he made his last remark, and it dropped
lower now. "Keep awake, Dick!" said the leader, gaily. "The small hours are the worst."
"He tried, but his head dropped again. "Dick!" urged the leader. "Keep awake!"
"I can't", he indistinctly muttered. "I don't know what strange influence is stealing over me, I can't."
"His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of one, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I must send him to
sleep.
"Get up and walk, Dick", cried the leader. "Try!"
"It was in vain to go behind the slumberer's chair and shake him. One o'clock sounded, and I presented myself to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.
"To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, withou bope of benefit. To him alone I was an awful phantom maang quite useless confession. I foresee it will ever be the same. The two living men together will never come to release me. When appear, the sense of one of the two will be locked in sloop, he will neither see nor hear me, my communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be unserviceable, Woe Woe ! Woe!"
As the two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild's mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the specter, and that M. Idle's immovability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at one o'clock. In the terror of this sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard so p free from the four fiery threads that he snapped them, after he had pulled them out to a great width. Being then out of bonds he caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed downstairs with him.
"What are you about. Francis?" demanded Mr. Idle My bedroom is not down here. What the deuce are you carrying me at all for? I can walk with a stick now. I don't want to be carried. Put me down."
Mr. Goodchild about him wildly pur him down in the old hall, and looked about him wildly.
"What are you doing? Idiotically plunging at your own friends, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempz" asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state.
"The one old man!" cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly, "and the two old men!"
Mr. Idle deigned no other reply, “The one old woman, 1 think you mean", as he began hobbling his way back staircase, with the assistance of its broad balustrade. up the
"I assure you, Tom," began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side, that since you fell asleep."
WAS IT A GHOST TELLING STORY.....
25
"Come, I like that!" and Thomas Idle, "I haven't closed an cyc!"
With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with honorable resentments. The settlement of the question of the one old man and the two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon made quite impracticable,
Mr. Idle said it was all bride cake, and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day.
Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn't been
asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had
been asleep?" Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled.
Mr. Goodchild's last words were that he had, in that read and tangible old sitting room of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and that he could write it out and print it every word.
Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked-and he did like, and has now done it.
The end....
