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. Indeed, I only once caught a glimpse of her full face, for, with a
persistence that was most annoying, she kept it turned from me; but in
that brief second the lustre of her long, blue eyes won my very soul,
and boy as I was I felt, like the hero in song, that I would, for my
bonnie ghost, in very deed, "lay me doon and dee." Her eyes are still firmly impressed on my memory; I shall never
forget them, any more than I shall forget the dainty curves of her
full red lips and the snowy whiteness of her perfect teeth. Nothing, I
thought, either on earth or in heaven could have been half so lovely,
and I was so enraptured that it was not until she was directly beneath
me that I perceived she was not alone, that walking by her side, with
one arm round her waist, his face and figure illuminated with the
light from her body, was Sir E.C. But how changed! Gone were the deep
black scowl, the savage tightening of the jaws, and the intensely
disagreeable expression that had earned for him the nickname of "The
laird deil," and in their stead I saw _love_--nothing but blind,
infatuated, soul-devouring _love_--love for which no words can find an
adequate description. Throwing discretion to the wind--for my excitement and curiosity had
risen to the highest pitch--I now thrust more than half my body out of
the hole in the trunk. The next instant, with a cry of dismay, I
pitched head first on to the ground. It would seem that boys, like cats, cannot in ordinary circumstances
be killed, and, instead of breaking my neck, I merely suffered that
most immaterial injury--immaterial, at least, in my case--a temporary
disendowment of the senses. On regaining the few wits I could lay
claim to, I fully expected to find myself in the hands of the irate
laird, who would seize me by the scruff of the neck and belabour me to
pieces. Consequently, too frightened to move, I lay absolutely still
with my eyes shut. But as the minutes glided by and nothing happened,
I picked myself up. All was quiet and pitch dark--not a vestige of the
"Lady in White"--not a vestige of Sir E.C. It did not take me very long to get out of the wood and home. I ran
all the way, and as it was still early--far too early for any of the
household to be astir, I crept up to my bedroom unobserved. But not to
sleep, oh dear me, no! not to sleep, for the moment I blew the candle
out and got into bed, reaction set in, and I suffered agonies of fear! When I went to school in the morning, my equilibrium restored, and,
bubbling over with excitement to tell the boys what had happened, I
received another shock--before I could ejaculate a word of my
experiences, I was told--told with a roar and shout that almost broke
the drum of my ears, that "the auld laird deil" was dead! His body had
been found stretched on the ground, a few feet from the hollow oak, in
the avenue shortly after sunrise. He had died from syncope, so the
doctor said, that had probably been caused by a shock--some severe
mental shock. I did not tell my companions of my night's adventure after all. My
eagerness to do so had departed when I heard of "the auld laird's"
death. CASE XVI

    THE GHOST OF THE HINDOO CHILD, OR THE
      HAUNTINGS OF THE WHITE DOVE HOTEL, NEAR
      ST. SWITHIN'S STREET, ABERDEEN


In the course of many years' investigation of haunted houses, I have
naturally come in contact with numerous people who have had first-hand
experiences with the Occult. Nurse Mackenzie is one of these people. I
met her for the first time last year at the house of my old friend,
Colonel Malcolmson, whose wife she was nursing. For some days I was hardly aware she was in the house, the illness of
her patient keeping her in constant seclusion, but when Mrs.
Malcolmson grew better, I not infrequently saw her, taking a morning
"constitutional" in the beautiful castle grounds. It was on one of
these occasions that she favoured me with an account of her psychical
adventure. It happened, she began, shortly after I had finished my term as
probationer at St. K.'s Hospital, Edinburgh. A letter was received at
the hospital one morning with the urgent request that two nurses
should be sent to a serious case near St. Swithin's Street. As the
letter was signed by a well-known physician in the town, it received
immediate attention, and Nurse Emmett and I were dispatched, as day
and night nurses respectively, to the scene of action. My hours on
duty were from 9 p.m. till 9 a.m. The house in which the patient was
located was the White Dove Hotel, a thoroughly respectable and
well-managed establishment. The proprietor knew nothing about the
invalid, except that her name was Vining, and that she had, at one
period of her career, been an actress. He had noticed that she had
looked ill on her arrival the previous week. Two days after her
arrival, she had complained of feeling very ill, and the doctor, who
had been summoned to attend her, said that she was suffering from a
very loathsome Oriental disease, which, fortunately is, in this
country, rare. The hotel, though newly decorated and equipped
throughout with every up-to-date convenience, was in reality very
old. It was one of those delightfully roomy erections that seem built
for eternity rather than time, and for comfort rather than economy of
space. The interior, with its oak-panelled walls, polished oak floors,
and low ceilings, traversed with ponderous oaken beams, also impressed
me pleasantly, whilst a flight of broad, oak stairs, fenced with
balustrades a foot thick, brought me to a seemingly interminable
corridor, into which the door of Miss Vining's room opened. It was a
low, wainscoted apartment, and its deep-set window, revealing the
thickness of the wall, looked out upon a dismal yard littered with
brooms and buckets.