It was now nearly the end of July. The weather, which for many weeks had been fine and warm, suddenly changed to a spell of cold and wet. Rain dripped dismally from the eaves, the tennis courts were sodden, and the orchard was a marsh. The girls had grown accustomed to spending almost all their spare time out of doors, and chafed at their enforced confinement to the house. They hung about in disconsolate little groups, and grumbled. Miss Beasley, who was generally well aware of the mental atmosphere of the Grange, registered the barometer at stormy, and decided that prompt measures were necessary. To work off the steam of the school, she suggested a good old-fashioned game of hide-and-seek, and gave permission for it to be played on those upper landings which were generally forbidden ground. Twenty-six delighted girls started at once upstairs, and passed through the wire door, specially unlocked for their benefit, to the dim and mysterious regions that lay under the roof. It was the best place in the world for the purpose—long labyrinths of passages leading round into one another, endless attics, and innumerable cupboards. The smallness of the latticed 228 windows, combined with the wetness of the afternoon, produced a twilight that was most desirable, and highly suited to the game.

Hermie and Veronica picked sides, and the former’s band stole off to conceal themselves, while the others covered their eyes in orthodox fashion, and counted a hundred.

“Cuckoo! We’re coming!” shouted Hermie at last, and the fun began.

Up and down, and in and out, diving through doorways, racing along passages, chasing one another round corners, groping in cupboards, panting, squealing, laughing or shuddering, the girls pervaded the upper story. There was a ghostly gloom about the old place which made it all the more thrilling, and gave the players a feeling that at any moment some bogy might spring upon them from a dark recess, or a skinny hand be stretched downwards through a trap-door. Flushed, excited, and really a little nervous, both sides at last sought the safety of the “den.” Two or three of them began to compare notes. They were joined by others. In a very short time the whole school knew that at least a third of their number had seen a “something.” They were quite unanimous in their report. “It” was a girl of about their own age, in a dark-green dress with a wide white collar. Hermie and Ardiune had noticed her most distinctly. She had smiled and beckoned to them, and run along the passage, but when they turned the corner she had disappeared; and Linda and Elsie, whom they had met coming in the opposite direction, declared that they had seen nobody. Lois and Katherine had caught a glimpse of her as they 229 chased Maudie in one of the attics, and Joan declared positively that she had seen her flitting down the stairs.

“It’s queer in the extreme,” murmured Valentine.

“Are you quite sure it wasn’t really only one of us?” urged Meta.

“Absolutely!” declared Hermie emphatically. “We all have on our brown serges to-day, and I tell you this girl was in dark green; not a gym. costume to wear over a blouse, like ours, but a dress with long sleeves and a big white collar.”

“I don’t believe she’s a real girl at all,” faltered Magsie tremulously. “She’s a spook!”

Magsie voiced the opinion of the majority. It was what most of the school had been feeling for the last five minutes. The interest in the supernatural, which had been a craze earlier in the term until sternly repressed by Miss Beasley, suddenly revived. Daphne remembered the magazine article she had read entitled “The Borderland of the Spirit World,” and cold thrills passed down her spine. Veronica ventured the suggestion that the apparition might be an astral body or an elemental entity.

“It’s a case for the Society for Psychical Research to investigate,” she nodded gravely. “I always said the Grange was bound to be haunted.”

“What was this girl like?” asked Raymonde reflectively. “Ancient or modern?”

“Modern, decidedly. She had on a green dress with a white––”

“So you’ve told us already,”—impatiently. “We know about her clothes. What was she like?” 230

Hermie stood for a moment with eyes shut, as if calling up a mental picture.

“About Ardiune’s height, but slimmer: rosy face, and dark hair done in a plait—really not so unlike you, Ray, only I should say decidedly prettier.”

“Thank you!” sniffed Raymonde.

“That just about sizes her up!” agreed those who had seen the vision.

“She didn’t look spooky at all,” continued Hermie. “She was quite substantial. You couldn’t see through her, and she didn’t melt into the air.”

“And yet she disappeared?”

“Yes, she certainly disappeared, and in a passage where there were no doors.”

“Do you remember the story I told you of the lady whose astral double left her body during sleep, and haunted a friend’s house?” began Veronica darkly.

“Don’t tell any ghost stories up here—don’t!” implored Fauvette. “I’ll have hysterics in another minute!”

“I’m frightened!” whimpered Joan.

“I vote we go downstairs,” suggested Morvyth. “I don’t want to play any more hide-and-seek at present.”

Nobody else seemed anxious to pursue the game. The attics were too charged with the occult to be entirely pleasant. Everybody made a unanimous stampede for the lower story, passing down the winding staircase with a sense of relief. Once on familiar ground again, things looked more cheery.

“Back already?” commented Miss Gibbs, who had met them on the landing. 231

“Yes, we’re all—er—a little tired!” evaded Hermie, with one of her conscious blushes.

“Better go to the dining-room and get out your sewing, then,” replied the mistress, eyeing her keenly.

The girls proceeded soberly downstairs, still keeping close together like a flock of sheep. Raymonde, however, lagged behind. For a moment or two she stood pondering, then she ran swiftly up the winding staircase again into the attic.

The talk of the school that evening turned solely upon the ghost girl. Meta, who had not seen the vision, declared it was nothing but over-excited imagination, and feared that some people were apt to get hysterical; at which Hermie retorted that no one could be further from hysteria than herself, and that six independent witnesses could scarcely imagine the same thing at the same moment, without some basis for their common report. Veronica considered that they had entered unwittingly into a psychic circle, and encountered either a thought-form that had materialized, or a phantasm of the living.

“Some people have capacities for astral vision that others don’t possess,” she said in a lowered voice. “It’s quite probable that Hermie may be clairvoyante.”

Hermie sighed interestedly. It was pleasanter to be dubbed clairvoyante than hysterical. She had always felt that Meta did not appreciate her.

“We’ve none of us been trained to realize our spiritual possibilities,” she replied, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

While a few girls disbelieved entirely in the 232 spectre, and others accepted the explanation according to Veronica’s occult theories, most of the school considered the attic to be haunted by a plain old-fashioned ghost, such as anybody might expect to find in an ancient mansion like the Grange. They waived the subject of modern costume, deciding that in the dim light such details could hardly have been adequately distinguished, and that the apparition must have been a cavalier or Jacobite maiden, whose heart-rending story was buried in the oblivion of years.

“Perhaps her lover was killed,” commented Fauvette, with a quiver of sympathy.

“Or her father was impeached by Parliament,” added Maudie.

“She may have had a cruel stepmother who ill-treated her,” sighed Muriel softly.

Raymonde alone offered no suggestions, and when asked for her opinion as to the explanation of the mystery, shook her head sagely, and said nothing. The immediate result of the experience was that Veronica went to Miss Beasley, and borrowed An Antiquarian Survey of the County of Bedworthshire, including a description of its Castles and Moated Houses, together with a History of its Ancient Families—a ponderous volume dated 1823, which had before been offered for the girls’ inspection, but which nobody had hitherto summoned courage to attack. She studied it now with deep attention, and gave a digest of its information for the benefit of weaker minds, less able than her own, to grapple with the stilted language. The school preferred lighter literature for their own reading, but were content to listen to legends of the past 233 when told by Veronica, who had rather a gift for narrative, and could carry her audience with her. As the next afternoon was still hopelessly wet, the girls gathered in one of the schoolrooms with their sewing, and were regaled with a story while they worked.

“I found out all about the Grange,” began Veronica. “It belonged to a family named Ferrers, and they took the side of the King in the Civil War. While Sir Hugh was away fighting in the north, the house was besieged by Cromwell’s troops. The Lady of the Manor, Dame Joan Ferrers, had to look after the defence. She had not many men, nor a great deal of ammunition, and not nearly as much food as was necessary. She at once put all the household upon short rations, and drew up the drawbridge, barred the great gates, and prepared to hold out as long as she possibly could. She knew that the Cavalier forces might be marching in the direction of Marlowe at any time to relieve her, and that if she could keep the enemy at bay even for a few weeks the Grange might be saved. The utmost vigilance was used. Sentries were posted in the tower over the great gate, and the lady herself constantly patrolled the walls. With so small a garrison it was a difficult task, for the men had not adequate time to rest or sleep, and were soon nearly worn out. The scanty supply of food was almost at an end. Unless help should arrive within a few days, they would be obliged to capitulate. All the flour was gone, and the bacon and salted beef, and the cocks and hens and pigeons, and even the horses had been killed and eaten, though these had been kept till the very 234 last. The worst of the trouble was that there was treachery within the walls. Dame Joan was well aware of it, though she could not be absolutely sure which of her men were disaffected, for they all still pretended loyalty to their master and to the King. Nobody, she felt, was really to be trusted, though the walls were still manned, and the cannon blazed away with what ammunition was left. If the Grange were to be saved at all, it was imperative that a message asking for help should be conveyed to the Royalist forces. But how could it be taken? The Roundheads were encamped all round the walls, and would promptly shoot anyone who attempted to penetrate their lines. None of the garrison would be stout-hearted enough to venture.

“Sir Hugh’s eldest son was away fighting with his father, but there was a daughter at home, a girl of about thirteen, named Joyce. She came now to her mother, and begged to be allowed to take the message. It was a long time before Dame Joan would give her consent, for she knew the terrible danger to which Joyce would be exposed; but she had the lives of her younger children to think of as well, and in the end she gave her reluctant permission. Just when it was growing dusk, she took her little daughter to a secret doorway in the panelling, from which a subterranean passage led underneath the moat into the adjoining wood. This secret passage was known only to Sir Hugh and his wife and their eldest son, and it was now shown to Joyce for the first time. It was a horrible experience to go down it alone, but she was a brave lassie, and ready to risk her life for the sake of her mother, and her younger brothers and sisters. She 235 took a lantern to guide her, and set off with as cheerful a face as she could show. The air was stale and musty, and in some places she felt as if she could scarcely breathe. Her footsteps, light though they were, rang hollow. After what seemed to her a very long way, she found herself in a small cave, and could catch a gleam of twilight sky through the entrance. She at once extinguished the lantern, and advanced with extreme caution. She was in the wood at the farther side of the moat, a place where she had often played with her brothers, and had gathered primroses and violets in the springtime. She could recognize the group of tall elms, and knew that if she kept to the right she might creep through a hole in the hedge, and make her way across some fields into the high road. As quietly as some little dormouse or night animal she stole along.

“Not far off she could see the great camp fire, round which the troopers were preparing their supper. She hoped they would all be too busy with their cooking to notice her. As she passed behind some bushes she suddenly caught the gleam of a steel helmet within a few yards of her. She crouched down under the shelter of a clump of gorse. But in doing so she made a faint rustle.

“‘Halt! Who goes there?’ came the challenge.

“Joyce’s heart was beating so loudly that she thought it must surely be heard.

“The sentry listened a moment, then levelling his pistol, sent a shot through the gorse bush. It passed within a few inches of her head, but she had the presence of mind not to cry out or move. Evidently thinking he was mistaken, the sentry 236 paced farther on, and Joyce, seizing her golden opportunity, slipped through the hole in the hedge. Still using the cover of bushes, she made her way across three fields, and reached the road. It was quite dark now, but she knew her direction, and turned up a by-lane where she would be unlikely to meet troopers. All night she walked, guiding herself partly by the stars, for she knew that Charles’s Wain always pointed to the north. At dawn a very tired and worn-out little maiden presented herself at the gateway of Hepplethorpe Manor, demanding instant audience of Sir Roger Rivington. That worthy knight and loyal supporter of the Crown, on hearing her story, immediately sent horsemen with a letter to General Bright, of the King’s forces, who lay encamped only five miles off; and he, marching without delay for Marlowe Grange, surprised the Parliamentarians and completely routed them. The half-starved garrison opened the great gates to their deliverers with shouts of joy, and, we may be sure, welcomed the supplies of food that poured into the house later on. As for Joyce, she must have been the heroine of the family.”

“Is that all?” asked the girls, as Veronica paused and began to count the stitches in the sock she was knitting.

“All that’s in the book, and I’ve embroidered it a little. It was told in such a very dull fashion, so I put it in my own words. It’s quite true, though.”

“What became of Joyce afterwards?”

“She married Sir Reginald Loveday, and became the lady of Clopgate Towers. The tomb is in Byford Church.” 237

“If she’d been shot by the trooper, I should have thought she was the ghost girl!” commented Ardiune. “I don’t quite see how we could fix that up, though. It doesn’t seem to fit. You’re quite sure she escaped?”

“Perfectly certain. How else could the Grange have been saved?”

Veronica’s argument settled the question, but the girls felt that the dramatic interest of the situation would have been better suited if the story had ended with the melancholy death of the heroine, and her subsequent haunting of the Manor.

“I always heard that Cromwell’s soldiers destroyed the walls and made those big holes in the gateway with their cannon-balls,” said Morvyth, still only half convinced.

“So they did, but that was two years afterwards, and the children were all sent safely away before the second siege.”

“It hasn’t solved the mystery of the ghost girl,” persisted Ardiune. “Ray, what do you think about it?”

Raymonde, lost in a brown study, started almost guiltily, and recommenced her sewing with feverish haste.

“Think? Why, it’s a pretty story, of course. What more can I think? Why d’you ask me?”

“Oh! I don’t know, except that you generally have ideas about everything. Who can the ghost girl be?”

But Raymonde, having lost her scissors, was biting her thread, and only shook her head in reply.