Sea Mew Abbey

About a quarter of a century ago, under a bright May morning sun, the English Channel Squadron steamed into the harbour of the French town of Harbourg, with flags half-mast high...

The years rippled away so quietly at the convent that Freda Mulgrave shot up into a slender girl of eighteen while yet the remembrance of her romantic arrival was fresh in the m...

Freda watched the opening of the farmhouse door with dread, as there peeped out a man’s face, pale, flat, puffy, with light eyes and colourless light eyelashes. Freda took an in...

Freda crossed the courtyard to one of the ruined corner-towers, and finding the staircase still practicable, continued her wanderings, with cautious steps, along the top of the...

The unfortunate Blewitt had never, in his lifetime, excited the liking or respect of any one. Selfish and mean, he had been tolerated because he was useful to his employers, who...

After a little more jolting along the highroad they turned to the right up one less used, and soon came in full sight of the Abbey ruins. Just a jagged dark grey mass they looke...

Freda Mulgrave was superstitious. While she was groping her way along the front of the dismantled house, she heard a bell tolling fitfully and faintly, and the sound seemed to c...

“Oh,” began Mrs. Bean, with a fat and comfortable sigh, “I am glad to have you here, I declare. Ever since the Captain told me, in his short way, that you were coming, I’ve been...

Freda was so easily led by kindness that when, not heeding her passionate outburst, Crispin pushed her gently out of the room, she made no protest either by word or action. He l...

“You’ll be glad to go to bed, I dare say, my dear,” said the housekeeper. “If you hear any noises in the night, don’t be afraid; this old house is full of them. Good-night.”

Crispin had breakfasted, but he remained in the room, “to wait,” as he said with grim jocularity, “on the mistress of the house.” Whenever she tried to bring the talk again to t...

The following was the day of the inquest. It was to be held at the Abbey itself, and Mrs. Bean had swept the drawing-room, and uncovered the furniture in that dismal and damp ap...

The body of Blewitt, still wearing its clothes, had been wrapped in a sheet and dragged to this hiding-place that morning. As soon as she recognised the dead face, Freda sprang...

The funeral was to take place on the following day. It was not without a shudder that Freda made her way up to her bedroom that night, although she had taken the precaution of i...

The day of the funeral was a trying one for Freda. She ran up to her own room when the undertaker’s men arrived, and would have remained there for hours if she had not been dist...

Freda Mulgrave had come face to face with the most difficult problem of conduct she had ever encountered. There was now no shirking the fact that her father was the organiser an...

To Freda’s perhaps rather prejudiced mind, the contrast between the two cousins seemed even stronger than when she had seen them a fortnight before at their own home. The fact t...

Dick disappeared through the door by which he had entered so quickly that before Freda had had time to utter more than an exclamation, the rows of real books and sham ones were...

The discovery of the fact that there was a secret way in and out of the Abbey had a strong and most unhappy effect upon poor Freda. She dared not say anything about it to Nell,...

Freda was startled by this suggestion, which betrayed how much the young man knew or guessed. She turned from the door, where she had paused with her fingers on the handle.

Freda fancied that the long-drawn breath which escaped her as she recognised the man must attract his attention. But he was too intent upon the enjoyment of the strong spirit, w...

Not even the stolid silence with which he received her demonstrative outburst could dissuade Freda from her new belief that this man, whom she had always known as Crispin Bean,...

Freda went through the secret door the second time with more bravery then she had felt on the first occasion. For although she was bound on an expedition the dangers of which it...

At the very first step she made on the rope ladder, Freda sustained a sudden shock which almost caused her to lose her grip of the ropes. With a wild, wailing cry, a great sea-g...

John Thurley was still unconscious as they lifted him from the rock; and the jolting to which they were forced to subject him, as they made the difficult descent to the level la...

Before the two women had entered the musty, damp-smelling apartment which had once been one of the best bedrooms of the house, the younger began to feel that her companion was u...

Danger had roused Freda from a little frightened girl into a ready-witted and daring woman. No sooner had she fastened down the trap-door and made it impossible for Crispin to g...

Freda watched her father’s retreating figure for some moments, without daring to look at John Thurley’s face. When at last she found the courage to throw a shy, frightened glanc...

When Freda overheard the words which told her the police were on the track of the murderer, she did not lose a moment in making her way back to the Abbey. Mrs. Bean opened the i...

From time to time, when they got into the open country, Freda was alarmed by the sight of another cart some distance behind them on the road. For long tracts the hedges, the win...

“I am not sure that they are coming to-night, but they will come sooner or later. One said they knew where he was, and the other asked the way to Oldcastle Farm.”

“This way,” said Thurley in a peremptory tone, as Barnabas was carrying the girl to his own cart, “I’m going back to the Abbey and can take Miss Mulgrave with me.”

Freda was by this time getting too much accustomed to the shifts and surprises of the smugglers’ haunt to be greatly alarmed by the discovery that she was not alone in the under...

It was getting dark when the dogcart drove up to Oldcastle Farm. The front door which had been partly destroyed by the forcible entry of the police was open, and both gentlemen...