Advancing along the avenue was the thing I had always longed to see,
and for which I had risked so much: the mysterious, far-famed "Lady in
White,"--a ghost, an actual, _bona fide_ ghost! How every nerve in my
body thrilled with excitement, and my heart thumped--till it seemed on
the verge of bursting through my ribs! "The Lady in White!" Why, it
would be the talk of the whole countryside! Some one had _really_--no
hearsay evidence--seen the notorious apparition at last. How all my
schoolfellows would envy me, and how bitterly they would chide
themselves for being too cowardly to accompany me! I looked at her
closely, and noticed that she was entirely luminous, emitting a strong
phosphorescent glow like the glow of a glow-worm, saving that it was
in a perpetual state of motion. She wore a quantity of white drapery
swathed round her in a manner that perplexed me sorely, until I
suddenly realised with a creeping of my flesh that it must be a
winding-sheet, that burial accessary so often minutely described to me
by the son of the village undertaker. Though interesting, I did not
think it at all becoming, and would have preferred to see any other
style of garment. Streaming over her neck and shoulders were thick
masses of long, wavy, golden hair, which was ruffled, but only
slightly ruffled, by the gentle summer breeze. Her face, though
terrifying by reason of its unearthly pallor, was so beautiful, that,
had not some restraining influence compelled me to remain in hiding, I
would have descended from my perch to obtain a nearer view of it.
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