The red sun dropped behind the forest-clad hills upon the distant sh.o.r.e of Lake Luna. They could see the rippling water sparkle in the last rays of the sun. A white sail was set in this background of red and purple glory, like a single, flashing diamond. The birds were winging homeward to their nests in the hills behind the girls" camp.
"What a quiet, soothing picture," sighed one of the seniors.
"It might be altogether too quiet up here after dark if there weren"t such a bunch of us," said Josephine Morse. "Ugh!"
"The haunted house, eh?" suggested Laura.
"Don"t say a word! I bet there _are_ ghosts in it," declared another girl, with a shiver.
"I"ll guarantee there are rats in it," laughed Laura.
"You"re so brave!" exclaimed Jess, with scorn. "But you wouldn"t want to go into that house even in the daytime."
"I don"t like rats," admitted her chum.
"That"s all right," put in Celia Prime. "But there really is a ghost connected with the old Robinson house."
"There always is," laughed Laura.
"Mary will tell you about it," said the senior, gravely. "You have been brought here for that purpose, you candidates. Wait until after supper."
"Oh!" squealed one of the Lockwood twins. "A real ghost story?"
"Just as real as any ghost story possibly can be," said Mary O"Rourke, laughing. "Gather around the fire, you infants. Never mind the smoke-it will keep away the mosquitoes. Here come Jennie and Belle with the milk, and we can make the chocolate. The table is spread-and we"ve got to hurry so as to get our share away from the black ants."
"Oh-o! Don"t!" begged somebody. "Don"t remind us of them. I feel them crawling all over me _now_!"
"To say nothing of the spiders," laughed the wicked Mary.
"Oo-h! That"s the only trouble with picnics. Somebody ought to go ahead and sweep off the gra.s.s," declared Dorothy Lockwood.
"That would surely be "adorning nature"-"painting the lily"-and all that," laughed Mary.
The shadows were creeping up from the valley. The electric lights flashed out all over the city and made a brilliant spectacle below them.
The night wind rustled the trees and the whip-poor-will began his complaint from his pitch upon a dead branch.
A bell began to toll at intervals from somewhere far up the hillside.
Some wandering cow wore this bell, but it sounded ghostly.
"Listen!" commanded Mary O"Rourke, standing beyond the fire where she could be seen and heard by all the candidates, at least, who were grouped in one place. "And especially you infants who this night appear before our solemn body for initiation into its ancient rites and mysteries. Listen!
"Before it grew dark we could all see right down there beyond the fording place in the brook, where the road crosses a ploughed field on the other side. Not a year ago, this farmer from whom Bell bought the milk, Mr. Sitz, was driving home just on the edge of the evening, with his son and his father-in-law, in a spring wagon. He drove a pair of young horses, and was giving them particular attention, so he says. But as they came up the hill toward the brook he saw a light moving down the road between them.
"In his opinion it was a lantern under a carriage. He saw the light flash back and forth, low above the ground, as though a horse"s legs were between the lantern and those approaching it.
""Here comes a carriage, Dad," said his son.
""It"s a top-buggy, Israel," declared the old gentleman on the other side of Mr. Sitz.
"The young horses sprang forward nervously as they reached the ford. The wagon splashed through the brook and out upon the hard road. The horses had crowded over to the left hand, and Mr. Sitz knew that he was not giving the coming carriage sufficient room to pa.s.s.
"But as he pulled his team back to the right hand side of the road he glanced ahead again and saw that the light had disappeared. Black as the night was he was confident there was no vehicle there-where he had expected to see one.
""What"s come o" that carriage, Father?" he asked the old man.
""Why-why it went by, didn"t it?" returned his father-in-law.
""I didn"t see it," declared the son.
""It did not pa.s.s us on the high side," Mr. Sitz declared.
""Must have turned into the ploughed field," suggested the boy again.
"Mr. Sitz stopped his horses and gave the lines to his son to hold. He climbed down with his own lantern and searched for wheel tracks in the field beside the road. He was positive no vehicle had pa.s.sed his wagon on the right hand side of the road. He could find no marks of the wheels anywhere in the soft ground. But as he turned back to climb into his wagon again he saw a light flash up for an instant in the windows of that front room yonder-in the haunted house," said Mary, with emphasis and pointing dramatically.
"Mr. Sitz will tell you about it, if you ask him. He will also tell you what the mysterious carriage and the mysterious light in the haunted house meant."
"Oh, dear!" murmured Jess in Laura"s ear. "Doesn"t she make you feel creepy?"
"Not yet," whispered Laura. "Lots of people have seen intermittent lights on marshy ground, and the flare of light in the window of the old house was the reflection of his own lantern, perhaps."
"Silence!" commanded Mary, sternly. "No comments. Besides, those who try to explain ghost stories have a thankless job on their hands," and she laughed. "We all are like the old woman who declared she didn"t believe in ghosts, but she was awfully afraid of them!
"This is the weird tale: Years ago an old man named Robinson and his unmarried sister lived in that house. They were the last of their family, and both were miserly. For that reason they had never married, for fear the other would get the larger share of the property here on the side of the mountain. And they had money, too.
"Sarah Robinson," pursued Mary, "was of that breed of misers who delight in handling their gold, and worshipping it. She could not enjoy figures in a bank-book as she enjoyed handling the actual money. But John Robinson was of a more practical turn, and he banked his money as he made it.
"One day a man who had borrowed of John paid him a large sum of money-took up a mortgage, in fact. It was wild spring weather and the stream yonder was running full. But although it rained so hard John Robinson would not risk his money in the house over night.
"His sister and he quarreled about it. She said he was a fool to go to town to bank his money on such a day. She would have been glad to sit up all night and watch it-and every night, too. But John harnessed his decrepit mare to his ramshackle buggy, and started for town.
""You put the lamp in the east window for me when it comes dark, and I"ll get back all right," he told her.
"Sarah scolded all the time until he was gone. She even said she hoped he"d be drowned in the river-he and his money together. Oh! she was quite a savage old creature, they say.
"Along towards evening a dreadful tempest burst up in the hills-a regular cloudburst. A thunderous torrent overflowed the banks of that pretty brook yonder. It became dark and they say old Sarah did not set the lamp in the window as she usually did when John was away from home.
"In the midst of the storm and darkness she must have seen his lantern jogging along the road, under the hind axle of his carriage, just as Mr.
Sitz saw it," continued Mary, in a solemn voice. "But the old woman would not light her lamp. The old man came down to the brook in the pitch darkness, missed the ford, drove into the deeper water below the crossing, and was swept away, horse, carriage and all, by the flood!"
"Oh-oh!" was the murmured chorus.
"How awful!" cried one girl.
"What an old witch!" exclaimed Jess Morse.
"But Sarah ran to set her light in the window-when it was too late,"
pursued Mary, the story teller. "And every night for years thereafter, while she lived alone here in the old house, Sarah Robinson put her lamp in the window just after dark. And they say _she often puts it in the window now!_ But usually the ghost light is preceded by the light and carriage on the road beyond the ford."