The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) by Marie O'Regan

quietly enough, poor little timid thing. She won’t disturb me.”
    Daniel grunted, and his master understood the grunt to mean obedient assent; but here Mr Bascom was unhappily mistaken. The proverbial obstinacy of the pig family is as nothing compared with the obstinacy of a cross-grained old man, whose narrow mind has never been illuminated by education. Daniel was beginning to feel jealous of his master’s compassionate interest in the orphan girl. She was a sort of gentle clinging thing that might creep into an elderly bachelor’s heart unawares, and make herself a comfortable nest there.
    “We shall have fine carryings-on, and me and my old woman will be nowhere, if I don’t put down my heel pretty strong upon this nonsense,” Daniel muttered to himself, as he carried the breakfast-tray to the pantry.
    Maria met him in the passage.
    “Well, Mr Skegg, what did my master say?” she asked breathlessly. “Did he see anything strange in the room?”
    “No, girl. What should he see? He said you were a fool.”
    “Nothing disturbed him? And he slept there peacefully?” faltered Maria.
    “Never slept better in his life. Now don’t you begin to feel ashamed of yourself?”
    “Yes,” she answered meekly; “I am ashamed of being so full of fancies. I will go back to my room tonight, Mr Skegg, if you like, and I will never complain of it again.”
    “I hope you won’t,” snapped Skegg; “you’ve given us trouble enough already.”
    Maria sighed, and went about her work in saddest silence. The day wore slowly on, like all other days in that lifeless old house. The scholar sat in his study; Maria moved softly from room to room, sweeping and dusting in the cheerless solitude. The midday sun faded into the grey of afternoon, and evening came down like a blight upon the dull old house.
    Throughout that day Maria and her master never met. Anyone who had been so far interested in the girl as to observe her appearance would have seen that she was unusually pale, and that her eyes had a resolute look, as of one who was resolved to face a painful ordeal. She ate hardly anything all day. She was curiously silent. Skegg and his wife put down both these symptoms to temper.
    “She won’t eat and she won’t talk,” said Daniel to the partner of his joys. “That means sulkiness, and I never allowed sulkiness to master me when I was a young man, and you tried it on as a young woman, and I’m not going to be conquered by sulkiness in my old age.”
    Bedtime came, and Maria bade the Skeggs a civil goodnight, and went up to her lonely garret without a murmur.
    The next morning came, and Mrs Skegg looked in vain for her patient handmaiden, when she wanted Maria’s services in preparing the breakfast.
    “The wench sleeps sound enough this morning,” said the old woman. “Go and call her, Daniel. My poor legs can’t stand them stairs.”
    “Your poor legs are getting uncommon useless,” muttered Daniel testily, as he went to do his wife’s behest.
    He knocked at the door, and called Maria – once, twice, thrice, many times; but there was no reply. He tried the door, and found it locked. He shook the door violently, cold with fear.
    Then he told himself that the girl had played him a trick. She had stolen away before daybreak, and left the door locked to frighten him. But, no; this could not be, for he could see the key in the lock when he kneeled down and put his eye to the keyhole. The key prevented his seeing into the room.
    “She’s in there, laughing in her sleeve at me,” he told himself; “but I’ll soon be even with her.”
    There was a heavy bar on the staircase, which was intended to secure the shutters of the window that lighted the stairs. It was a detached bar, and always stood in a corner near the window, which it was but rarely employed to fasten. Daniel ran down to the landing, and seized upon this massive iron bar, and then ran back to the garret door.
    One blow from the heavy bar shattered the old