The Water Ghost and Others | Page 5

go out on the lake."
"But, my dear sir," returned the ghost, with a pale reluctance, "it is
fearfully cold out there. You will be frozen hard before you've been out
ten minutes."
"Oh no, I'll not," replied the master. "I am very warmly dressed.
Come!" This last in a tone of command that made the ghost ripple.
And they started.
They had not gone far before the water ghost showed signs of distress.
"You walk too slowly," she said. "I am nearly frozen. My knees are so
stiff now I can hardly move. I beseech you to accelerate your step."

"I should like to oblige a lady," returned the master, courteously, "but
my clothes are rather heavy, and a hundred yards an hour is about my
speed. Indeed, I think we would better sit down here on this snowdrift,
and talk matters over."
"Do not! Do not do so, I beg!" cried the ghost. "Let me move on. I feel
myself growing rigid as it is. If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff."
"That, madam," said the master slowly, and seating himself on an
ice-cake--"that is why I have brought you here. We have been on this
spot just ten minutes, we have fifty more. Take your time about it,
madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you."
"I cannot move my right leg now," cried the ghost, in despair, "and my
overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a
fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters."
"Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last."
"Alas!" cried the ghost, a tear trickling down her frozen cheek. "Help
me, I beg. I congeal!"
"Congeal, madam, congeal!" returned Oglethorpe, coldly. "You have
drenched me and mine for two hundred and three years, madam.
To-night you have had your last drench."
"Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then you'll see. Instead of the
comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be
iced-water," cried the lady, threateningly.
"No, you won't, either," returned Oglethorpe; "for when you are frozen
quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall
you remain an icy work of art forever more."
"But warehouses burn."
"So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and
surrounding it are fire-proof walls, and within those walls the
temperature is now and shall forever be 416 degrees below the zero
point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world--or the
next," the master added, with an ill-suppressed chuckle.
"For the last time let me beseech you. I would go on my knees to you,
Oglethorpe, were they not already frozen. I beg of you do not doo--"
Here even the words froze on the water ghost's lips and the clock struck
one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the ice-bound form,
and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the
rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice.

There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, conquered by the cold, a
prisoner for all time.
The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and to-day in a large storage
house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again
flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water.
As for the heir of Harrowby, his success in coping with a ghost has
made him famous, a fame that still lingers about him, although his
victory took place some twenty years ago; and so far from being
unpopular with the fair sex, as he was when we first knew him, he has
not only been married twice, but is to lead a third bride to the altar
before the year is out.

THE SPECTRE COOK OF BANGLETOP
I
For the purposes of this bit of history, Bangletop Hall stands upon a
grassy knoll on the left bank of the River Dee, about eighteen miles
from the quaint old city of Chester. It does not in reality stand there,
nor has it ever done so, but consideration for the interests of the living
compels me to conceal its exact location, and so to befog the public as
to its whereabouts that its identity may never be revealed to its
disadvantage. It is a rentable property, and were it known that it has had
a mystery connected with it of so deep, dark, and eerie a nature as that
about to be related, I fear that its usefulness, save as an accessory to
romance, would be seriously impaired, and that as an investment it
would become practically worthless.
The hall is a fair specimen of the architecture which prevailed at the
time