What a darling!
What a dear! What a duck! A sweet, pretty, innocent, prattling duck!
How like her mother--how like her handsome brother--how like
herself--very, very like herself! How every one loved it--how every
one worshipped it--how (and here the grey face beside her chuckled)
every one would miss it! How pink its toes--how fat its calves--how
chubby its little palms--how bonny its cheeks--and how white, how
gloriously, heavenly, snowy white--its throat! And she stretched
forth one of her stubby, inartistic fingers and played with its flesh.
Then she glanced furtively at the scissors, and smiled.
It was soon done, soon over, and she and the grey-faced piper danced a
minuet in the moonbeams; afterwards he piped a farewell dirge,--a
wild, weird, funereal dirge, and, marching slowly backwards, his dark,
gleaming eyes fixed gloatingly on hers, disappeared through the
window. Then the reaction set in, and Martha raved and shrieked till
every one in the house flew to the rescue.
Of course, no one--saving her father and mother--believed her. Ernest,
his wife, and the servants attributed her bloody act to jealousy; the
law--to madness; and she subsequently journeyed from Donaldgowerie to
a criminal lunatic asylum, where the recollection of all she had done
soon killed her. This was the climax. Mr. Whittingen sold
Donaldgowerie, and a new house was shortly afterwards erected in its
stead.
CASE XIII
THE FLOATING HEAD OF THE BENRACHETT INN,
NEAR THE PERTH ROAD, DUNDEE
Some years ago, when I was engaged in collecting cases for a book I
contemplated publishing, on _Haunted Houses in England and Wales_, I
was introduced to an Irish clergyman, whose name I have forgotten, and
whom I have never met since.
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