'WHEN OUR SHIP COMES IN.' A MOMENT leave your work, sweet wife! The gladness from your eyes. Like magic won't we alter this Long drives across the breezy downs No weather this-it snows again!- 'If you are there?' Your mood has caught Draw down the blind, dear Heart, and hide No sadness in your eyes there'll be, When, watching from the sunlit quay, We see our ship come in. ELSIE KENDALL. 'RUN TO EARTH.' BY MARY CHOLMONDELEY, AUTHOR OF 'THE DANVERS' JEWELS' CHAPTER I. WHEN I first met George Challoner I thought he was the best man all round I had ever come across. What he thought of me I do not know, but we took to each other, and, though our walks in life gave us but little in common, we became friends. He was in the Guards, very much in the Guards, admired by every one, and I was in the Foreign Office, not admired by any one, by some strange and inexplicable freak of Fortune. It is hardly necessary to state, that Challoner, being impecunious, a second son, and having liberal ideas as to what 'a man must have,' was engaged to be married to an equally impecunious young lady of great personal attractions. Challoner often talked over his affairs with me, as people have a way of doing. How he was ever to scrape together the pittance of fifteen hundred per annum, which was the least Lady Damer would allow her daughter to marry on, he knew not. He did not know how he could economise, except perhaps by not paying so many of his bills. A man had to live, you know. A man must have things. A man could not give up his horses, you know, and his T-cart positively saved him crowds of money in cabs, and was almost an economy. One day, when this state of things had been going on for some time, an invitation came to me from Challoner's brother, Lord Carden, asking me to go down to Kinston Castle for some shooting. I knew Lord Carden but slightly, and owed the invitation to Challoner, no doubt. The latter also wrote, begging me to come, and stating, as an extreme inducement, that his 'fiancée' was to be there. I turned it over in my mind. I felt curious to see the woman who had captivated Challoner. I VOL. 85 (V.-NEW SERIES). NO. 504. II had often heard of the Kinston battues; I went, little guessing as I packed my portmanteau, what the results of that visit might be. We were all assembled together one evening in a little room leading out of the great drawing-room at Kinston, having left its solemn expanse of yellow satin, its many pink shaded lamps, and its discomfort, for the cosy little room with its glow of firelight. Lord Carden, disappointed of the heavy and dignified conversation which his soul loved, and which would have enabled him to hold forth to his guests during the greater portion of the evening, was standing with his back to the fire, pompous and erect, wondering in an illused manner about every two minutes why we preferred sitting here rather than in the drawing-room, and futilely endeavouring to persuade us to go back. 'No, Charles, we won't go back,' said Lady Carden, shaking her fan at her stiff husband. 'We don't want to be agreeable, and we don't want to have any music, and we mean to stay here and tell ghost stories.' We were a large party, young people for the most part, with a few elders sprinkled among us. The ruddy firelight lit up the bright-coloured dresses grouped together in little knots, and just caught an outlying fold of the pink satin vesture of Miss Damer, a sweet small creature, with a dimple, and a round plump figure, and the prettiest laugh you ever heard, (and you heard it very often), who was sitting in the shadow, listening to something very important that Challoner seemed always to have to say to her. There was a subdued murmur of applause, and Lady Carden herself proceeded to tell a weird story, which was succeeded by many others equally thrilling. 'Is there not a ghost in the Challoner family?' asked one of the guests of Lady Carden. 'Of course there is,' she replied. The celebrated ghost of Challoner Chase. It is on that account that my husband's aunt, to whom Challoner belongs, lives abroad.' There was a general entreaty to Lady Carden to relate the story. She most good-naturedly complied, and being of a cheerful disposition, and possessed of considerable imagination and power of description, soon made 'our hair creep and our flesh stand on end,' by a graphic narration of a certain beautiful Miss Challoner, who had been murdered at Challoner, fifty years ago, and who had dragged herself into her little sitting-room and died there, crouching against the wall, too terrified to give any account of what had happened to her. 'And since then,' Lady Carden continued, in a low voice, 'from time to time she is still seen in the white fur cloak, and the long white dress in which she was murdered, to wander through the hall, and up the great hall staircase, and to disappear through the door leading into her boudoir. No one has ever ventured to follow her in there; but it has been whispered that each time she appears, the mark of the blood on the floor comes out fresh and distinct as on the day she was murdered.' 'How can any one whisper that?' said a saucy voice from behind, if no one has ever been in ?' Hush!' said Lady Carden. Since that happened many have tried to live there, but none have been able to do so for long. Miss Challoner, who is now a very old woman, tried for one year and failed. She never would tell what she saw. No one can live there. The house has stood empty these twenty years. Whoever she leaves it to when she comes to die, will sell it, you will see, beautiful as it is.' At this moment Lord Carden, who had long since left us, re-entered the room with the pompous important expression of one who bears such news he must perforce be listened to, a luxury I had already perceived, but without surprise, that he did not often enjoy. An open telegram was in his hand. 'Miss Challoner is dead,' he said, with a sort of relish in our undivided and excited attention. She died at Florence two days ago. By some extraordinary negligence, into which I shall not fail to inquire of the authorities, the telegram has been delayed, and has only this moment come into my hands. The late Miss Challoner was a person of considerable ability, exemplary in the discharge of the most trivial duty, provided it appeared to her judgment as such, of the most charitable disposition, and, indeed, I may say But enough. He said it, and we had to hear it, but others need not. At last Lady Carden suddenly found it was getting late, and Challoner on the hint flew to light the bedroom candles in the hall, and the party broke up for the night. When I entered the breakfast-room next morning, the only person I found there was the old family lawyer, Mr. Brook, who was staying in the house arranging some papers for Lord Carden. He was much interested in the death of Miss Challoner. 1 To whom would she leave Challoner, he wondered. She could leave it to her housemaid if she liked, for it was not entailed. Of course Lord Carden was her nephew, but she had two other nephews of the name of Morton, ill-conditioned young men, towards whom she had always had a secret leaning, who had run through what little money they had ever possessed, and a good deal more that they had borrowed. The quiet old man got quite excited. Gradually every one streamed down to breakfast, Lady Carden in a black dress in honour of the old aunt whom none of them had ever known, and Challoner and Miss Damer entered through the French window, fortified by a stroll together before breakfast, for the dreadful parting of a few days which was about to take place. I should have thought it was a chilly morning for a stroll, but they had not seemed to find it so, and, indeed, I have remarked that when people are engaged they seldom appear to notice the weather, or to be affected by it. Everybody was opening their letters; Lord Carden was reading aloud a short paragraph in the local paper about a meeting of a Board of Guardians at which he had been present, while the urns bubbled and steamed, and made no secret that breakfast was waiting. Lord Carden's reading was suddenly interrupted by his brother, who started and looked up with a short exclamation, his face flushed, an open letter in his hand. 'She has left it all to me,' he said hoarsely, looking from one to another. Challoner Chase and £3000 a year.' 'What, the place with the naughty horrid ghost!' exclaimed Miss Damer, running to him. 'Oh, George, how delightful! And we'll sell it, and buy a sweet little weeny house in London, and get all our things from that dear, delicious Liberty!' She burst into a little ringing laugh, and laid her two small hands on his arm. He looked down at her with the silent adoration which is so irritating to all other women except the adored one. 'Of course you will sell,' remarked Lord Carden, when we had all somewhat overcome the first shock; though really in these days, land rarely giving more than two per cent., and land A owners 'The terms of the will,' said Mr. Brook, taking the lawyer's letter out of Challoner's hand, and glancing rapidly over it, 'bequeath to you all the real and personal estate of the testatrix-namely, |