As I stood gazing at the scene in
awestruck wonder, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine trees,
and moaning through their long and gloomy aisles reverberated like
thunder. The sounds, suggesting slightly, ever so slightly, a tattoo,
brought with them vivid pictures of the Drummer, too vivid just then
to be pleasant, and I turned to go. To my unmitigated horror, a white
and lurid object barred my way. My heart ceased to beat, my blood
turned to ice; I was sick, absolutely sick, with terror. Besides this,
the figure held me spellbound--I could neither move nor utter a sound.
It had a white, absolutely white face, a tall, thin, perpendicular
frame, and a small, glittering, rotund head. For some seconds it
remained stationary, and then, with a gliding motion, left the path
and vanished in the shadows.
Again a breeze rustled through the tops of the pine trees, moaned
through their long and gloomy aisles, and reverberated like thunder;
rat-tat, tat, rat-tat, tat--and with this sound beating in my ears,
reaction set in, and I never ceased running till I had reached my
hotel.
CASE IX
THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS
AT HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR
To me Hennersley is what the Transformation Scene at a Pantomime was
to the imaginative child--the dreamy child of long ago--a floral
paradise full of the most delightful surprises. Here, at Hennersley,
from out the quite recently ice-bound earth, softened and moistened
now by spring rain, there rises up row upon row of snowdrops,
hyacinths and lilies, of such surpassing sweetness and beauty that I
hold my breath in astonishment, and ecstatically chant a Te Deum to
the fairies for sending such white-clad loveliness.
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