It was good advice, maybe, but it fell upon pretty
unfruitful soil.

Chapter 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts

BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the
afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up
refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let
the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no
doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that
other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin
rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen
there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it
could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the
bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it
but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and
have it all done over again--as we hoped she would, this time--but she was
otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance,
she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could.

We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o'clock,
with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the
walls. It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in
a remote part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how
many years, because of its evil repute.

This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of
enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and
the tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty
cobwebs under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business
for a century.

Catherine said:

"Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen--they have merely
been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now,
and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and
fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with
that narrow room, and if it exists--and of that there is no reasonable
doubt--it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where
you are, and take note of what happens."

That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls
had died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny
silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute
march past the bastilles. We sat looking vac