Three Ghost Stories | Page 9

passionately waving his right arm.
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that
this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men,
standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made.
The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to
me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a
bed.
With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,--with a flashing self-reproachful
fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be
sent to overlook or correct what he did,--I descended the notched path with all the speed I
could make.
"What is the matter?" I asked the men.
"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."
"Not the man belonging to that box?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not the man I know?"
"You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who spoke for the others,
solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, "for his face is
quite composed."
"O, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from one to another as
the hut closed in again.
"He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But
somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the
light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was
towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it
happened. Show the gentleman, Tom."
The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of
the tunnel.
"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at the end, like as if I saw
him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be
very careful. As he didn't seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were

running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call."
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear the way!'"
I started.
"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my
eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use."
Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more
than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the
Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had
repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had attached,
and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE



CHAPTER I
--THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE

Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the
conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is
the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There
was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of
any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway
station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood
outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train
running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was
utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly
commonplace people- -and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say
that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.
The manner of my lighting on it was this.
I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at
the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine
who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to
suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and
had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky,
and had