Old Joe and his ancient spouse were there to receive them, and did so with alacrity. It was a tacit part of the bond that they were not to be required to remain at Heath Hover after dark, but on this occasion they were stretching a point; partly through motives of curiosity in that they were anxious to see what the new arrival was like; partly, that with the house well lighted up, and the bustle and stir of preparation, and the advent of some one young, and therefore presumably lively, on the scene, the idea of shadowy manifestations didn't seem in keeping somehow.

"Why, this is ripping," cried Melian as she obtained her first view of the old living-room. The deep, old-fashioned grate with its wide chimney was piled high with roaring logs, and a bright lamp on the table lighted up the low-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, and even the dark, red-papered walls. "Why, it's a typical old-world sort of place. Ought to have a ghost, and all that kind of thing."

At this remark the venerable Judy, who was hobbling about putting some finishing touches to the table, stopped and stared. Then, shaking her head, she hobbled out again.

"What's the matter with the old party, Uncle Seward?" said Melian, whom this behaviour struck. But she looked up too soon--just in time to catch her uncle's frown in fact. "Is there one?" she added suddenly, and pointedly.

"Good Heavens, child. Every blessed house that wasn't built the day before yesterday, that isn't reeking with raw plaster and new cement, is supposed to carry a ghost, especially in the country, and standing in lonely solitude in the middle of woods like this. Throw in a deep old-fashioned fireplace and some oak panelling and there--you've got your Christmas number at once."

Telepathy may be bosh or it may not. At any rate, to Melian Seward, the lightness of her uncle's tone, together with the annoyed look she had caught upon his face, and the sudden perturbation of the old woman at her remark, did not carry conviction. She felt certain that there was some story attaching to the place.

"What a jolly old door," she remarked, catching sight of the one in the corner, half hidden as it was, behind a curtain. "Why it looks quite old. Oh, but it is good," going over to it with her quick, rapid habit of movement. "And the lock! Why it's splendid. What is it, Uncle Seward? Sixteenth century, at least?"

Mervyn looked at her, and strove not to look at her queerly.

"I don't know what date it is," he said. "It leads down to an old vault-like cellar, which probably was used for storing wine. It isn't now, because I'm too poor to have any wine to store. At least, I mean, darling,"--catching the expression with which she looked up--"I can't afford to run wine cellars, but,"--and then came in a little embarra.s.sment--"I'm not quite too poor to be able to offer a home to my--stranded little niece, shall we say?"

The additional term of endearment had struck her. She looked at him in the lamplight, standing erect and beautiful.

"Dear Uncle Seward," she said. "I can't say anything--except that--I don't know how it is--there seems to have come something since I met you--since I heard from you. Why, you bring back my dear old father to me at every turn. You are so like him. You have the same expressions-- everything. And yet--you were not even brothers."

"Cousins, though. Nearly the same thing. Kiss me, child. You haven't yet. You know--all the public squash on the station platform."

She did, and in the act it seemed as if her dead father--dead under the impression that he could serve her interests best by so dying--were alive and speaking within this room. Even in the quiet, contained voice, she seemed to recognise his.

It may have been imagination, but Mervyn seemed to think she could not withdraw her attention from the old nail-studded, shaded door in the corner. She kept looking at it even while they were talking. He remembered his vigil on the night of the rescue. Heavens! was this beastly, deluding mesmeristic effect going to hold her too, now at the first few minutes of her arrival? Then a diversion occurred. A cry from Melian suddenly drew his attention.

"What's this? Oh you little sweet. Here come to me, little pooge-pooge!"

The little black kitten had suddenly landed itself, without notice, upon the white tablecloth, where it squatted, purring.

"Oh, you sweet little woolly ball--where did you come from?" cried Melian, picking up the tiny creature and stuffing it into the hollow of her cheek and neck. "Uncle Seward, did you get this on purpose for me?

Tell me."

Her cheeks were pink with animation, and her blue eyes shone.

"No, dear. That's a special child of my own, since it's little life began. It is with me always. I'm glad you've taken to it."

"Taken to it? I should think so. Now you're going to be jealous, Uncle Seward. I'm going to appropriate it. Oh, what a sweet little beast!"

holding it up under the armpits. But the kitten growled expostulatingly.

"'Beast'? But it's human," laughed Mervyn. "Well, you shall have it, dear. Poogie--there's your new owner. See? My nose is clean out of joint. I can take a back seat."

Again Melian started, and momentarily grew grave.

"Poogie." That too was one of her father's expressions. She looked again at her uncle. Bright as the lamplight was, still it was artificial light, and under it the likenesss was more and more emphasised, in fact, startling.

"Come upstairs, child, and I'll show you your room. It's right next to mine, so you've only to bang on the wall--if you want--I mean--er--if you were to get nervous in the middle of the night, in a strange place."

"But what on earth should I get nervous about?" exclaimed the girl, in round-eyed wonderment.

"Oh, nothing. But the s.e.x is given that way, so I only thought I'd tell you, that's all. Now, you can find your way down, and we'll have dinner when you're ready."

Left alone, Melian proceeded to look round the room. It was small but cosy, with two cupboards let into the wall. A bright fire burned in the grate, and four lighted candles made a full and cheerful glow. The window she noticed was rather small, and looking out of this, under the light of the moon, she again took stock of the house. The windows at the projecting ends, unoccupied, seemed to stare lifelessly. The house was too much below the level of the sluice to allow a view of the pond, but the outline of the woods towered up against the frosty stars, and the hoot of owls and the high up quacking of flighting duck, sounded upon the stillness. A feeling of intense peace, of intense thankfulness came over her. She had found a very haven of rest she felt already, and her newly acquired relative--well--she was sure she was going to get very fond of him indeed.

Soon she betook herself downstairs, and cosy and bright indeed the room looked. A roast fowl lay temptingly upturned and surrounded by shreds of bacon, and the potatoes were beautifully white and flowery. The little black kitten was playing riotously with a cork tied to the end of a string which always hung from the back of one of the armchairs.

"Well, child, I hope you've brought an appet.i.te with you," said Mervyn, as they sat down. "You'll have to be fed up. 'Plain but wholesome,'

you know, as the school prospectuses used to say."

"Yes, I've brought one. I feel miles better already." And then she talked on--telling him about her life of late, and its ups and downs.

But of her earlier life she seemed to avoid mention.

And Mervyn, encouraging her to talk, was furtively watching her. The animation which lit up her face, bringing with it a tinge of colour, the gleam of the golden hair in the lamplight, the movement of the long, white, artistic fingers--there was no point in the entrancing picture that escaped him. Indeed, he had been lucky beyond compare, he decided, when Violet Clinock's letter had found him; and again and again as he looked at Melian, he made up his mind that she was there for good, unless she got tired of it and of him and insisted on leaving. But he would not think of that to-night.

They got up at last, and Mervyn drew two big chairs to the fire. Then he lighted his pipe. The kitten in the most matter of course way jumped upon Melian's lap and curled up there.

"There you are," laughed her uncle. "My nose is out of joint the first thing. It used to prefer me for a couch, but I don't quarrel with its taste."

So they sat on and chatted cosily. At last, bedtime came. Then Melian remarked on the circ.u.mstance that the table hadn't been cleared.

"No. It won't be, till to-morrow morning," was the reply. "Old Judy has taken herself off long ago. I told you you'd have to rough it--eh?

You see she and old Joe are the only people I can get to do my outlying work, and they hang out in a cottage the other side of the hill--beyond the first pond we pa.s.sed. The young ones won't stay on the place--find it too lonely, they say. So there you are."

"Yes. I'm going to turn to and do things," answered Melian decisively.

"Well, never mind about beginning now," he said, lighting her candle and preceding her to her room. "Look, here's a handbell. If you want anything, or are feeling lonely or 'nervy' in the night, ring it like the mischief--and I'll be there. Good-night, dear."

"Good-night, Uncle Seward," and she kissed him affectionately.

Mervyn returned to the living-room and re-lighted his pipe. His gaze wandered to the shadowy door in the corner. Was its tradition really and completely upset? That strange manifestation, as to which he was hardly yet prepared to swear to as entirely an optical delusion--had presaged good to somebody, in that by keeping him awake he had been able to save the life of the stranger. But then the stranger had died immediately afterwards, under mysterious circ.u.mstances, and had this not befallen why then he, John Seward Mervyn would never have become aware of the existence or propinquity of his niece. And what a find that was--a young, bright, beautiful presence to irradiate the shadows of this gloomy old haunted grange. No room for any melancholic, fanciful imaginings with that about.

And yet--and yet--it may be that he was not quite easy in his mind. Not for nothing had he shown her that clearly ringing handbell, and laid emphasis on the unhesitating use of it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A SLIP ON A STONE.

The morning broke, bright and clear, one of those rare winter mornings without a cloud in the blue, and the sun making additional patterns through the frost facets on the window pane. And the said sun had not very long since risen.

Mervyn looked out of the window; the house faced due east and caught the first glory of the morning sun--when there was any to catch, and to-day there was. The frosted pines glistened and gleamed with it, so too did the earth, with its newly laid coating of crystals. But in the midst of this setting was a picture.

Melian was coming down the path. A large hooded cloak was wrapped round her, but she had nothing on her head, and the glory of her golden hair shone like fire in the new born, clear rays. The kitten, a woolly ball of black fluffiness, was squatted upon her shoulder, and she was singing to herself in a full, clear voice. He noted her straight carriage, and the swing of her young, joyous, elastic gait. A picture indeed! And this bright, beautiful, joyous child, was going to belong to him henceforward--to him, all alone. No one else in the wide world had the shadow of a claim upon her. She had come to him out of sordid surrounding of depression and want--yes, it would soon have come to that, judging from the account she had given of herself. Well, she had fallen upon the right place, and at the right time.

He dressed quickly. He heard her enter the house, and old Judy's harsh croaky tones mingling with the clear melodious ones. Then a silvery rippling laugh, then another. He remembered old Judy could be funny at times in her dry, cautious old rustic way. John Seward Mervyn felt the times had indeed changed for him. He felt years and years younger, under the bright spell of this youthful influence in the gloomy and shunned old house.

"Well dear!" he cried gaily, coming into the room. "You don't look much of the 'flu' patient slowly convalescing. What sort of an unG.o.dly early time did you get up?"

"Oh Uncle Seward, I've had such fun. I've been out all up the pond, and this little poogie had a romp all over the ice. Then it rushed up a tree after a squirrel, and they sat snarling at each other at the end of a thin bough, and the squirrel jumped to another tree, but the poogie wasn't taking any. Were you, pooge-pooge?" And she squeezed the little woolly ball into her face and neck.