Book III - Page 2

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 ghost or spiritual manifestation of some
kind which moved in this silent way. In order to see and hear
better, I softly moved back the folding grille, opened the French
window, and stepped out, bare-footed and pyjama-clad as I was, on the
marble terrace. How cold the wet marble was! How heavy smelled the
rain-laden garden! It was as though the night and the damp, and even
the moonlight, were drawing the aroma from all the flowers that
blossomed. The whole night seemed to exhale heavy, half-intoxicating
odours! I stood at the head of the marble steps, and all immediately
before me was ghostly in the extreme--the white marble terrace and