'I know quite well where the old house is,' said Ericson.'I went in the last time I walked this way.'
'Was the door open?' asked Robert.
'I don't know,' answered Ericson.'I found one of the windows open in the basement.'
'We'll get the len' o' ane o' the lanterns, an' gang direckly.It canna be mair nor the breedth o' a rig or twa frae the burn.'
'I can take you by the road,' said Ericson.
'It will be very cold,' said Miss St.John,--already shivering, partly from disquietude.
'There's timmer eneuch there to haud 's warm for a twalmonth,' said Robert.
He went back to the coach.By this time the horses were nearly extricated.Two of them stood steaming in the lamplight, with their sides going at twenty bellows' speed.The guard would not let him have one of the coach lamps, but gave him a small lantern of his own.When he returned with it, he found Ericson and Miss St.John talking together.
Ericson led the way, and the others followed.
'Whaur are ye gaein', gentlemen?' asked the guard, as they passed the coach.
'To the auld hoose,' answered Robert.
'Ye canna do better.I maun bide wi' the coch till the lave gang back to Drumheid wi' the horses, on' fess anither pole.Faith, it'll be weel into the mornin' or we win oot o' this.Tak care hoo ye gang.There's holes i' the auld hoose, I doobt.'
'We'll tak gude care, ye may be sure, Hector,' said Robert, as they left the bridge.
The house to which Ericson was leading them was in the midst of a field.There was just light enough to show a huge mass standing in the dark, without a tree or shelter of any sort.When they reached it, all that Miss St.John could distinguish was a wide broken stair leading up to the door, with glimpses of a large, plain, ugly, square front.The stones of the stair sloped and hung in several directions; but it was plain to a glance that the place was dilapidated through extraordinary neglect, rather than by the usual wear of time.In fact, it belonged only to the beginning of the preceding century, somewhere in Queen Anne's time.There was a heavy door to it, but fortunately for Miss St.John, who would not quite have relished getting in at the window of which Ericson had spoken, it stood a little ajar.The wind roared in the gap and echoed in the empty hall into which they now entered.Certainly Robert was right: there was wood enough to keep them warm; for that hall, and every room into which they went, from top to bottom of the huge house, was lined with pine.No paint-brush had ever passed upon it.Neither was there a spot to be seen upon the grain of the wood: it was clean as the day when the house was finished, only it had grown much browner.A close gallery, with window-frames which had never been glazed, at one story's height, leading across from the one side of the first floor to the other, looked down into the great echoing hall, which rose in the centre of the building to the height of two stories; but this was unrecognizable in the poor light of the guard's lantern.All the rooms on every floor opened each into the other;--but why should I give such a minute description, making my reader expect a ghost story, or at least a nocturnal adventure? I only want him to feel something of what our party felt as they entered this desolate building, which, though some hundred and twenty years old, bore not a single mark upon the smooth floors or spotless walls to indicate that article of furniture had ever stood in it, or human being ever inhabited it.There was a strange and unusual horror about the place--a feeling quite different from that belonging to an ancient house, however haunted it might be.It was like a body that had never had a human soul in it.There was no sense of a human history about it.Miss St.John's feeling of eeriness rose to the height when, in wandering through the many rooms in search of one where the windows were less broken, she came upon one spot in the floor.It was only a hole worn down through floor after floor, from top to bottom, by the drip of the rains from the broken roof: it looked like the disease of the desolate place, and she shuddered.
Here they must pass the night, with the wind roaring awfully through the echoing emptiness, and every now and then the hail clashing against what glass remained in the windows.They found one room with the window well boarded up, for until lately some care had been taken of the place to keep it from the weather.There Robert left his companions, who presently heard the sounds of tearing and breaking below, necessity justifying him in the appropriation of some of the wood-work for their own behoof.He tore a panel or two from the walls, and returning with them, lighted a fire on the empty hearth, where, from the look of the stone and mortar, certainly never fire had blazed before.The wood was dry as a bone, and burnt up gloriously.
Then first Robert bethought himself that they had nothing to eat.
He himself was full of merriment, and cared nothing about eating;for had he not Miss St.John and Ericson there? but for them something must be provided.He took his lantern and went back through the storm.The hail had ceased, but the wind blew tremendously.The coach stood upon the bridge like a stranded vessel, its two lamps holding doubtful battle with the wind, now flaring out triumphantly, now almost yielding up the ghost.Inside, the guard was snoring in defiance of the pother o'er his head.
'Hector! Hector!' cried Robert.
'Ay, ay,' answered Hector.'It's no time to wauken yet.'
'Hae ye nae basket, Hector, wi' something to eat in 't--naething gaein' to Rothieden 'at a body micht say by yer leave till?'
'Ow! it's you, is 't?' returned Hector, rousing himself.'Na.Deil ane.An' gin I had, I daurna gie ye 't.'
'I wad mak free to steal 't, though, an' tak my chance,' said Robert.'But ye say ye hae nane?'
'Nane, I tell ye.Ye winna hunger afore the mornin', man.'
'I'll stan' hunger as weel 's you ony day, Hector.It's no for mysel'.There's Miss St.John.'
