The White Invaders | Page 2

by Negroes talking of ghosts.
She turned suddenly on Willie. The colored boy had been employed in the Dorrance household since childhood. Jane herself was only seventeen, and she had known Willie here in this same big white stone house, almost from infancy.
"Willie, what you saw, was it a--a man?"
"Yes," said the boy eagerly. "A man. A great big man. All white an' shinin'."
"A man with a hood? Or a helmet? Something like a queer-looking hat on his head, Willie?"
"Jane!" expostulated Don. "What do you mean?"
"I saw him--saw it," said Jane nervously.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "You did? When? Why didn't you tell us?"
"I saw it last night." She smiled faintly. "I didn't want to add to these wild tales. I thought it was my imagination. I had been asleep--I fancy I was dreaming of ghosts anyway."
"You saw it--" Don prompted.
"Outside my bedroom window. Some time in the middle of the night. The moon was out and the--the man was all white and shining, just as Willie says."
"But your bedroom," I protested. "Good Lord, your bedroom is on the upper floor."
But Jane continued soberly, with a sudden queer hush to her voice, "It was standing in the air outside my window. I think it had been looking in. When I sat up--I think I had cried out, though none of you heard me evidently--when I sat up, it moved away; walked away. When I got to the window, there was nothing to see." She smiled again. "I decided it was all part of my dream. This morning--well, I was afraid to tell you because I knew you'd laugh at me. So many girls down in Somerset have been imagining things like that."
* * * * *
To me, this was certainly a new light on the matter. I think that both Don and I, and certainly the police, had vaguely been of the opinion that some very human trickster was at the bottom of all this. Someone, criminal or otherwise, against whom our shotgun would be efficacious. But here was level-headed Jane telling us of a man standing in mid-air peering into her second-floor bedroom, and then walking away. No trickster could accomplish that.
"Ain't we goin'?" Willie demanded. "I seen it, but it'll be gone."
"Right enough," Don exclaimed grimly. "Come on, Willie."
He disregarded Jane as he walked to the door, but she clung to him.
"I'm coming," she said obstinately, and snatched a white lace scarf from the hall rack and flung it over her head like a mantilla. "Don, may I come?" she added coaxingly.
He gazed at me dubiously. "Why, I suppose so," he said finally. Then he grinned. "Certainly no harm is going to come to us from a ghost. Might frighten us to death, but that's about all a ghost can do, isn't it?"
We left the house. The only other member of the Dorrance household was Jane's father--the Hon. Arthur Dorrance, M.P. He had been in Hamilton all day, and had not yet returned. It was about nine o'clock of an evening in mid-May. The huge moon rode high in a fleecy sky, illumining the island with a light so bright one could almost read by it.
"We'll walk," said Don. "No use riding, Willie."
"No. It's shorter over the hill. It ain't far."
* * * * *
We left our bicycles standing against the front veranda, and, with Willie and Don leading us, we plunged off along the little dirt road of the Dorrance estate. The poinsettia blooms were thick on both sides of us. A lily field, which a month before had been solid white with blossoms, still added its redolence to the perfumed night air. Through the branches of the squat cedar trees, in almost every direction there was water visible--deep purple this night, with a rippled sheen of silver upon it.
We reached the main road, a twisting white ribbon in the moonlight. We followed it for a little distance, around a corkscrew turn, across a tiny causeway where the moonlit water of an inlet lapped against the base of the road and the sea-breeze fanned us. A carriage, heading into the nearby town of St. Georges, passed us with the thud of horses' hoofs pounding on the hard smooth stone of the road. Under its jaunty canopy an American man reclined with a girl on each side of him. He waved us a jovial greeting as they passed.
Then Willie turned us off the road. We climbed the ramp of an open grassy field, with a little cedar woods to one side, and up ahead, half a mile to the right, the dark crumbling ramparts of a little ancient fort which once was for the defense of the island.
Jane and I were together, with Willie and Don in advance of us, and Don carrying the shotgun.
"You really saw it, Jane?"
"Oh, I