The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

54 THE HAUNTED GRANGE,
the knocking j surely old Hannah must be deaf, or 80
unaccustomed to visitors that she never thought of saying,
"Come in." A long pause ensued, and then she murmured,
"Shall I ever, 0, shall I ever behold him again on
earth? " Roused perhaps by the sound of her voice,
another summons, consisting of three distinct and forcible
raps on the door, was heard. " Soon?" cried the obtuse
woman. Again the knocking resounded, and again the
deaf hermit relapsed into silence j at length she shook her
withered head, and muttered, "Yes, ever yes - promise,
promise! but, alas! it will be in another and better world;
I have waited too long in this in vain." So saying, she
resumed her stump of a pen, and, carefully tilting the
broken flower vase that served her for an inkstand,
scratched away at some old, mildewed sheets that purported
to be the" real history of Mrs. Hannah Morrison."
We may look over the old body's shoulder as much as
we please, for there ill no one there to interrupt us hut a
poor black cat, almost as Mind and wearied-looking as its
mistress. Silence and desolation are there, and nought
disturbs the utter desertion of that lone room but the
scratching of Hannah's pen and the occasional tap, tap, of
a still unsatisfied visitor, who often and seemingly vainly
courted her attention by sundry appeals to the door, walls,
and even, as it appeared, under the very table at which
she was writing; and still she wrote on, sometimes raising
her head and uttering a short sentence, as if actually conversing
with her unseen visitor, at other times responding
only by a motion of her lips; and this very eccentric habit
of talking to herself it was, which, combined with the
remarkable noises which bats, owls, and other indescribable
adjuncts to old ruins produced, that procured for Rookwood
Grange the reputation of being haunted, and for Hannah