John stood
stunned. He hardly doubted he saw an apparition. When at length he roused
himself, and looked in the direction in which it went, it had all but
vanished in the thickening white mist.
He found the rest of his way home almost mechanically, and went straight
to bed, but for a long time could not sleep.
For what might not the apparition portend? Mr. Whichcote lay hurt by a
fall from his horse, and he had met his very image on the back of just
such a horse, only turned to a skeleton! Was he bearing him away to the
tomb?
Then he remembered that the horse's name was Death.
CHAPTER XIX.
JOHN IS TAKEN ILL.
In the middle of the night he woke with a start, ill enough to feel that
he was going to be worse. His head throbbed; the room seemed turning
round with him, and when it settled, he saw strange shapes in it. A
few rays of the sinking moon had got in between the curtains of one
of the windows, and had waked up everything! The furniture looked
odd--unpleasantly odd. Something unnatural, or at least unearthly, must
be near him! The room was an old-fashioned one, in thorough keeping with
the age of the house--the very haunt for a ghost, but he had heard of no
ghost in that room! He got up to get himself some water, and drew the
curtains aside. He could have been in no thraldom to an apprehensive
imagination; for what man, with a brooding terror couched in him, would,
in the middle of the night, let in the moon? To such a passion, she is
worse than the deepest darkness, especially when going down, as she was
then, with the weary look she gets by the time her work is about over,
and she has long been forsaken of the poor mortals for whom she has so
often to be up and shining all night.
Pages:
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122