CHAPTER IX.

NEW ACQUAINTANCE.

Vibert shouting for help, Emmie shrieking, the pony kicking and struggling in vain attempts to scramble out of the ditch, rain rattling, thunder rolling, all made a confused medley of sounds, while the deepening darkness was ever and anon lit up by lightning-flashes.

"Oh, Vibert! dear Vibert! are you hurt?" cried the terrified Emmie, with whom personal fear did not counterbalance anxiety for her young brother's safety.

"I'm not hurt; I lighted on a bramble-bush; I've got off with a few scratches," answered Vibert, who had regained the road. "But where on earth are you, Emmie? Can't you manage to get up?"

"No," gasped Emmie; "the chaise keeps me down. Oh, there is the lightning again!" and she shrieked.

"Never mind the lightning," cried Vibert impatiently. "How am I to get the pony on his legs? he's kicking like mad; and, oh! do stop screaming, Emmie, you're enough to drive any one wild. It was your pull and your shrieking that did all the mischief."

Vibert had had little experience with horses, and to release, almost in darkness, a kicking pony from its traces, or set free a lady imprisoned by an overturned chaise, were tasks for which he had neither sufficient presence of mind nor personal strength. Glad would the poor lad then have been to have had Bruce beside him, Bruce with his firm arm and his strong sense, and that quiet self-possession which it seemed as if nothing could shake. Vibert felt in the emergency as helpless as a girl might have done. Now he pulled at the upturned wheel of the chaise, but without lifting it even an inch; then he caught up the whip which had dropped from his hand in the shock of the fall, but he knew not whether to use it would not but make matters worse. Vibert ran a few paces to seek for assistance, stopped irresolute, then hurried back, thinking it unmanly to leave his sister alone in her helpless condition.

Happily for poor Emmie, assistance was not long delayed. Not a hundred yards from the spot where the accident had taken place, two men were sheltering themselves from the violence of the rain in a half-ruined barn. The cries of the lady, the loud calls for aid from her brother, reached the ears of these men. Two forms were seen by Vibert quickly approaching towards him, and he shouted to them to make haste to come to the help of his sister.

"There's a lady there, under the wheel," said the shorter and elder man to the other, when the two had reached the fallen chaise. "You'd better look to her while I cut the beast's traces; it's lucky I have my knife with me," and the speaker pulled a large clasp-knife out of his pocket.

The united efforts of the men, assisted by Vibert, soon were crowned with success. The pony, frightened and mud-bespattered, but not very seriously hurt, as soon as it was released from the harness, scrambled out of the ditch. The light basket-chaise was, without much difficulty, raised to its right position; and Vibert helped to lift up Emmie, who was half covered with mud, and almost in hysterics with fear.

"Come, come, there's nothing to be terrified at now; the danger is over. You're not hurt, are you?" asked Vibert, with some anxiety, for he loved his sister next to himself, though, it must be confessed, with a considerable space between.

Emmie scarcely knew whether she were injured or not. She was too much agitated at first to be able to answer her brother's question.

"I don't think that there are any bones broken; mud is soft," said the shorter man. "I guess she's more frightened than hurt."

"Be composed, dear lady; the storm is clearing off," observed the younger stranger, who had assisted Vibert in releasing Emmie from her distressing position, and who now helped to place her again in the chaise. This person's gallantry of manner contrasted with the almost coarse bluntness of his elder and shorter companion. Vibert at once concluded that the two individuals who had accidentally appeared together belonged respectively to very different grades of society.

The man who had cut the traces had had string in his capacious pocket as well as a knife, and now occupied himself in making such a rough arrangement with the harness as might enable the pony to draw the chaise. He effected his purpose with no small skill; considering the imperfect light by which he worked.

"Are we in the right road for Myst Court?" inquired Vibert of this individual, as he was tying the last firm knot in the string.

"Myst Court!" repeated the man in a harsh, croaking tone, at the same time raising his head from its stooping position. "Are you some of the new folk as are coming to the old haunted house?"

The question was asked in a manner so peculiar that it arrested the attention even of Emmie. A flash of lightning occurred at the moment, not so vivid as that which had terrified her so much, but sufficiently so to light up the features of the elderly man. Miss Trevor was again and again to see that strange face, but at no time did she behold it without recalling the impression which it made on her mind when first shown by that gleam of blue lightning. The man might be sixty years of age; his nose was hooked, so that it resembled a beak; his eyes were so sunken in his head that in that transient glimpse they looked like dark eye-holes; his hair, rough, unkempt, and grizzled, hung in wet strands as low as his shoulders, surmounted by an old battered felt hat. Emmie felt afraid of him, though she could not have given any reason for her fear.

"Yes, we are to live at Myst Court," replied Vibert. "Our father has just come into possession of the place."

"Woe to him, then, for an evil spell is upon it!" muttered the man; and a distant rumble succeeded the words like an echo. "The thunder and lightning, the darkness and storm, the mistaken way, the stumbling horse,--omens of evil--omens of evil! These things do not happen by chance."

"I wish that, instead of muttering unpleasant things, you would give a plain answer to a plain question, and not keep us shivering here!" said Vibert impatiently. "Are we, or are we not, on the direct road to Myst Court?"

"No, sir," replied the taller stranger; "but by yon lane you can reach the high-road which leads straight from S---- to the place of your destination."

"Then that urchin did misdirect us!" exclaimed Vibert. "If I meet him again, I will break every stick in his faggot over his back! Must we really return through that slough of a lane, through which we have scarcely been able to struggle?"

"You must retrace your way," said the stranger. "As far as the high-road my path is the same as your own, as I am returning to my quarters at S----. Perhaps you will permit me to occupy the vacant place in your chaise (I perceive that there is a back seat), as it would be a satisfaction to me to see the lady so far safe on the road. I shall do myself the honour of calling at Myst Court to-morrow, to inquire after her health. My name is Colonel Standish, at your service, and I serve beneath the star-spangled banner."

"We shall be glad of your company, sir," said Vibert; "and are much obliged for your ready help."

"It is lucky that old Harper and I were at hand," observed Standish, as he stepped into the low basket-chaise.

Vibert sprang into the front seat beside his sister, but before taking the reins from the hand of Harper, young Trevor pulled a shilling out of his waistcoat-pocket, and tendered it to the old man. There was light now afforded by the moon, for the rain had ceased, and through a rift in the clouds the radiant orb shone clearly.

"A silver shilling to him who has helped you to reach the haunted house," said Harper, as he took the coin and thrust it into a deep pocket. "I trow there will be gold for him who shall show you the way to leave it!"

Vibert laughed; Emmie shivered, but that may have been from cold, for the night-air was clamp and chilly, and her clothes were saturated with rain. Vibert now turned the pony into the lane, but the creature limped, and had evidently some difficulty in dragging the chaise.

"The beast is lame," observed Standish; "he has probably strained a leg in the fall. We gentlemen must walk through the lane, where the ground is so boggy." The colonel sprang from the chaise, and his example was followed by Vibert.

At a slow pace the party proceeded along the tree-overshadowed way. The recent rain had increased the heaviness of the road, and the trees dripped moisture from their wet branches over the travellers' heads. To Emmie, cold and damp as she was, and longing for shelter and rest, it seemed as if that wearisome lane would never come to an end.

Harper, uninvited, had joined himself to the party, and his peculiar croaking tones were frequently heard blending in converse with the clear voice of young Vibert, or the more manly accents of Standish. Emmie alone kept silence.

"Our friend Harper is a near neighbour of yours," observed the colonel to Vibert. "He has fixed himself just outside the gate of your father's grounds."

"But I never pass through that gate," croaked Harper. Neither Vibert nor Emmie felt any regret that their forbidding-looking neighbour should keep outside.

"You call the place haunted?" said Vibert.

"Haunted!" repeated Harper, muttering the word between his clenched teeth; and the old man shook his grizzled locks with so mysterious an air, that Vibert's curiosity was roused. He began to question Harper on the traditions connected with the place.

The old man was not loath to speak on the subject, though he imparted his information, if such it could be called, only in broken fragments; giving as it were, glimpses of grisly horrors, and leaving his hearers to imagine the rest.

Then Standish followed up the theme, and recounted strange stories from the New World,--all "well-authenticated" as he declared; stories of haunted houses and apparitions, each tale more horrible than the last. Such relations would have tried Emmie's nerves, even had the stories been told on some calm summer eve; but heard, as they were, in a dark, dreary lane, on a chilly November night, when she was wet, bruised, and trembling from the shock of a recent accident, tales of horror seemed to make the blood freeze to ice in her veins. Had Bruce been present, he would have discouraged such conversation; but sensational stories had charms for Vibert, and he never considered that they might work an evil effect on the sensitive mind of his sister.

At last the open road was regained, and Standish took leave of the Trevors. Rather to Emmie's surprise, the colonel familiarly shook hands with herself as well as her brother, as if the night's adventure had converted them into old friends. Vibert again sprang into the chaise; he was very impatient to get at last to the end of his wearisome journey, and urged the pony to as quick a pace as its lameness permitted over the smoother road.

The rest of the time of the drive was passed in silence. The way to Myst Court was clear enough from the brief directions given by Harper, of whom the travellers soon lost sight in the darkness, though he was following in the same track. Emmie had thought of inviting the old man to take the back seat in the chaise, but an intuitive feeling of repugnance prevented her from making the offer.

Glad were the weary travellers to reach the large iron gate which had been described as marking the entrance to the grounds of Myst Court. The gate had been left wide open to let them pass through. The drive up to the house was rather a long one. Emmie noticed only that it appeared to be through a thick wood, and that the chaise occasionally jolted over impediments in the way. To her great relief, the weary girl at length distinguished lights in some of the windows of a building which dimly loomed before her. There streamed forth also light from the open door, at which her brother Bruce was standing, watching for the arrival of the long-expected chaise.