A Thin Ghost | Page 5

the story. They asked Frank if he would like to
see his companion, Lord Saul, once again. The boy was quite collected,
it appears, in these moments. "No," he said, "I do not want to see him;
but you should tell him I am afraid he will be very cold." "What do you
mean, my dear?" said Mrs. Ashton. "Only that;" said Frank, "but say to
him besides that I am free of them now, but he should take care. And I
am sorry about your black cockerel, Aunt Ashton; but he said we must
use it so, if we were to see all that could be seen."
Not many minutes after, he was gone. Both the Ashtons were grieved,
she naturally most; but the doctor, though not an emotional man, felt
the pathos of the early death: and, besides, there was the growing
suspicion that all had not been told him by Saul, and that there was
something here which was out of his beaten track. When he left the
chamber of death, it was to walk across the quadrangle of the residence
to the sexton's house. A passing bell, the greatest of the minster bells,
must be rung, a grave must be dug in the minster yard, and there was
now no need to silence the chiming of the minster clock. As he came
slowly back in the dark, he thought he must see Lord Saul again. That
matter of the black cockerel--trifling as it might seem--would have to
be cleared up. It might be merely a fancy of the sick boy, but if not, was
there not a witch-trial he had read, in which some grim little rite of
sacrifice had played a part? Yes, he must see Saul.
I rather guess these thoughts of his than find written authority for them.
That there was another interview is certain: certain also that Saul would
(or, as he said, could) throw no light on Frank's words: though the
message, or some part of it, appeared to affect him horribly. But there
is no record of the talk in detail. It is only said that Saul sat all that
evening in the study, and when he bid good-night, which he did most
reluctantly, asked for the doctor's prayers.
The month of January was near its end when Lord Kildonan, in the
Embassy at Lisbon, received a letter that for once gravely disturbed that
vain man and neglectful father. Saul was dead. The scene at Frank's
burial had been very distressing. The day was awful in blackness and
wind: the bearers, staggering blindly along under the flapping black

pall, found it a hard job, when they emerged from the porch of the
minster, to make their way to the grave. Mrs. Ashton was in her
room--women did not then go to their kinsfolk's funerals--but Saul was
there, draped in the mourning cloak of the time, and his face was white
and fixed as that of one dead, except when, as was noticed three or four
times, he suddenly turned his head to the left and looked over his
shoulder. It was then alive with a terrible expression of listening fear.
No one saw him go away: and no one could find him that evening. All
night the gale buffeted the high windows of the church, and howled
over the upland and roared through the woodland. It was useless to
search in the open: no voice of shouting or cry for help could possibly
be heard. All that Dr. Ashton could do was to warn the people about the
college, and the town constables, and to sit up, on the alert for any
news, and this he did. News came early next morning, brought by the
sexton, whose business it was to open the church for early prayers at
seven, and who sent the maid rushing upstairs with wild eyes and
flying hair to summon her master. The two men dashed across to the
south door of the minster, there to find Lord Saul clinging desperately
to the great ring of the door, his head sunk between his shoulders, his
stockings in rags, his shoes gone, his legs torn and bloody.
This was what had to be told to Lord Kildonan, and this really ends the
first part of the story. The tomb of Frank Sydall and of the Lord
Viscount Saul, only child and heir to William Earl of Kildonan, is one:
a stone altar tomb in Whitminster churchyard.
Dr. Ashton lived on for over thirty years in his prebendal house, I do
not know how quietly, but without visible disturbance. His successor
preferred a house he already owned in the town, and left that of the
senior prebendary vacant. Between them these two men saw the
eighteenth century out and