led than
ran. We were now beginning to be in the sloppy rather than the deluged
stage. There was plenty of light to see by, for the moon had begun to
show out fitfully through the masses of flying clouds. The uncertain
light made weird shadows with the shrubs and statues in the garden. The
long straight walk which leads from the marble steps is strewn with fine
sand white from the quartz strand in the nook to the south of the Castle.
Tall shrubs of white holly, yew, juniper, cypress, and variegated maple
and spiraea, which stood at intervals along the walk and its branches,
appeared ghost-like in the fitful moonlight. The many vases and statues
and urns, always like phantoms in a half-light, were more than ever
weird. Last night the moonlight was unusually effective, and showed not
only the gardens down to the defending wall, but the deep gloom of the
great forest-trees beyond; and beyond that, again, to where the mountain
chain began, the forest running up their silvered slopes flamelike in
form, deviated here and there by great crags and the outcropping rocky
sinews of the vast mountains.

Whilst I was looking at this lovely prospect, I thought I saw something
white flit, like a modified white flash, at odd moments from one to
another of the shrubs or statues--anything which would afford cover from
observation. At first I was not sure whether I really saw anything or
did not. This was in itself a little disturbing to me, for I have been
so long trained to minute observation of facts surrounding me, on which
often depend not only my own life, but the lives of others, that I have
become accustomed to trust my eyes; and anything creating the faintest
doubt in this respect is a cause of more or less anxiety to me. Now,
however, that my attention was called to myself, I looked more keenly,
and in a very short time was satisfied that something was
moving--something clad in white. It was natural enough that my thoughts
should tend towards something uncanny--the belief that this place is
haunted, conveyed in a thousand ways of speech and inference. Aunt
Janet's eerie beliefs, fortified by her books on occult subjects--and of
late, in our isolation from the rest of the world, the subject of daily
conversations--helped to this end. No wonder, then, that, fully awake
and with senses all on edge, I waited for some further manifestation from
this ghostly visitor--as in my mind I took it to be. It must surely be a
ghos