It was terrible work getting through that gate; and in the long drive where the shadows were it was more terrible still. But he went on slowly, with his hands spread out as if to feel his way, and with his eyes, very bright and very wide open, peering into the darkness. He coughed, and hummed a tune, but dared not look behind him; the desperate business had been begun, and Comethup Willis, trembling in every limb, had yet fully made up his mind to see the ghost before he passed again out of the gate, if it were to be seen.
He saw it at last, much nearer the house than it had been before. It came toward him, more and more slowly as the distance between them lessened. Comethup backed away a little; but it suddenly stretched out hands to him, and came forward at a run, so that there was no chance of escape. And then the horror of the thing, the tense fear that had been knocking at his heart, fell away from him in a moment. For he touched warm hands of flesh, and saw that it was a child of about his own age, looking wonderingly at him. Poor Comethup almost laughed with the sudden relief, and they remained for a moment after their hands had dropped away from each other's, looking into each other's faces shyly, as children do at a first meeting.
"I'm so glad!" said Comethup at last. "I thought you were a ghost. Where do you come from?"
The child stretched out an arm, and pointed to the house. "There," she said, "with father." She spoke in a whisper--the whisper of a person long subdued, and used to the sound only of her own voice. She was very pretty, with big, dark eyes, and a very white skin; but there was an elfish, frightened manner about her that had nothing of childhood in it.
"But the house is all shut up," urged Comethup. "Why doesn't your father open the shutters?"
"All those rooms are empty," said the child; "they frighten you to go in them, because you make such a noise, and the eyes in the shutters stare at you. We live right round the other side."
"But it's such a dreadful place," said Comethup, compassionately, looking from the bright, eager face of the child to the desolate garden. "Aren't you very lonely?"
The child nodded and looked about her, and drew instinctively a little nearer to the boy.