There was something of a shudder about Clarence as he went to unbolt the back door; Martyn kept close to him. We saw them outside, and then Emily flew after them. From my window I could watch them advancing on the central gravel walk, Emily standing still between her brothers, clasping an arm of each. I saw the light near the ruin, and caught some sounds as of shrieks and of threatening voices, the light flitted towards the gable of the mullion rooms, and then was the concluding scream. All was over, and the three came back much agitated, Emily sinking into an armchair, panting, her hands over her face, and a nervous trembling through her whole frame, Martyn’s eyes looking wide and scared, Clarence with the well-known look of terror on his face. He hurried to fetch the tray of wine and water that was always left on the table when anyone went to a party at night, but he shivered too much to prevent the glasses from jingling, and I had to pour out the sherry and administer it to Emily. ‘Oh! poor, poor thing,’ she gasped out. ‘You saw?’ I exclaimed. ‘They did,’ said Martyn; ‘I only saw the light, and heard! That was enough!’ and he shuddered again. ‘Then Emily did,’ I began, but Clarence cut me short. ‘Don’t ask her to-night.’ ‘Oh! let me tell,’ cried Emily; ‘I can’t go away to bed till I have had it out.’ Then she gave the details, which were the more notable because she had not, like Martyn, been studying our jottings, and had heard comparatively little of the apparition. ‘When I joined the boys,’ she said, ‘I looked toward the mullion rooms; I saw the windows lighted up, and heard a sobbing and crying inside.’ ‘So did I,’ put in Martyn, and Clarence bent his head. ‘Then,’ added Emily, ‘by the moonlight I saw the gable end, not blank, and covered by the magnolia as it is now, but with stone steps up to the bricked-up doorway. The door opened, the light spread, and there came out a lady in black, with a lamp in one hand, and a kind of parcel in the other, and oh, when she turned her face this way, it was Ellen’s!’ ‘So you called out,’ whispered Martyn. ‘Dear Ellen, not as she used to be,’ added Emily, ‘but like what she was when last I saw her; no, hardly that either, for this was sad, sad, scared, terrified, with eyes all tears, as Ellen never, never was.’ ‘I saw,’ added Clarence, ‘I saw the shape, but not the countenance and expression as I used to do.’ [Picture: Lady Margaret’s ghost] ‘She came down the steps,’ continued Emily, ‘looking about her as if making her escape, but, just as she came opposite to us, there was a sound of tipsy laughing and singing from the gate up by the wood.’ ‘I thought it real,’ said Martyn.