The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Strange Revenge. 727
Before he could finish the sentence, the Witch sprang
forward and literally pushed him from the room.
And so the ghostly procession started, up-stair and
through passage— John with knees shaking under him, and
keeping an eye in his neck, as it were, for the hideous face
of the Witch pressed close upon him, and he could feel her
feverish breath fanning his ear. The light fell fitfully on
her features, exaggerating their ugliness by all manner of
shading produced by the swing of the lamp. She had the
appearance of an evil spirit leering out of the gloom.
Reduced to canvas, the trio would have made a striking
and eerie picture, illustrative of all that is superstitiously
weak in human nature.
David brought up the rear, fidgetty and anxious, but
strangely imbued by the thought that, outrageous as the
proceeding was, he would have been wrong to refuse com-
plying with the request of the poor demented creature before
him. How the stairs creaked ! And there was something
uncanny in the sough of the rising wind John had never
betore experienced. A door clicked off the latch at his
elbow and made the cold sweat stand like beads on his
forehead ;
the rustle of a leaf, blown in at an open window,
raised each hair till his head resembled an alarmed hedgehog.
If only he could speak! The silence, broken only by
soft and solemn tread, creak, and rustle, was intolerable.
Now they were approaching the chamber of death. What
if Flora's ghost were standing sentinel there ? This thought
was too much for John, and he fell back, with a look of such
piteous appeal that David silently took the lantern from
his shaking hand and led the way.
He paused vnth the handle of the door in his grasp and
help up the lantern to Elspeth's face. Now that he was on
the threshold of that sacred chamber, it struck him as
sacrilege to intrude with such company. The thought
passed away, swiftly as it came, as his eyes fell upon the
Witch's face. A change had taken place ; it now looked
placid and set; the eyes were calm, as if once more