All of a sudden she thought she heard something move behind her. She Looked hastily round, but there was nothing to be seen. Nothing but the grimly painted portrait of her poor dear man, which had been hung against the wall. She gave a heavy sigh to his memory, as she was accustomed to do, whenever she spoke of him in company; and went on adjusting her nightdress. Her sigh was reechoed; or answered by a long-drawn breath. She looked round again, but no one was to be seen. She ascribed these sounds to the wind, oozing through the rat holes of the old mansion; and proceeded leisurely to put her hair in papers, when, all at once, she thought she perceived one of the eyes of the portrait move.
“The back of her head being towards it!” said the storyteller with the ruined head, giving a knowing wink on the sound side of his visage—”good!”
“Yes, sir!” replied drily the narrator, “her back being towards the portrait, but her eye fixed on its reflection in the glass.”
Well, as I was saying, she perceived one of the eyes of the portrait move. So strange a circumstance, as you may well suppose, gave her a sudden shock. To assure herself cautiously of the fact, she put one hand to her forehead, as if rubbing it; peeped through her fingers, and moved the candle with the other hand. The light of the taper gleamed on the eye, and was reflected from it. She was sure it moved. Nay, more, it seemed to give her a wink, as she had sometimes known her husband to do when living! It struck a momentary chill to her heart; for she was a lone woman, and felt herself fearfully situated.
The chill was but transient. My aunt, who was almost as resolute a personage as your uncle, sir, (turning to the old storyteller,) became instantly calm and collected. She went on adjusting her dress. She even hummed a favorite air, and did not make a single false note. She casually overturned a dressing box; took a candle and picked up the articles leisurely, one by one, from the floor, pursued a rolling pincushion that was making the best of its way under the bed; then opened the door; looked for an instant into the corridor, as if in doubt whether to go; and then walked quietly out.
She hastened downstairs, ordered the servants to arm themselves with the first weapons that came to hand, placed herself at their head, and returned almost immediately.
Her hastily levied army presented a formidable force. The steward had a rusty blunderbuss; the coachman a loaded whip; the footman a pair of horse pistols; the cook a huge chopping knife, and the butler a bottle in each hand. My aunt led the van with a red-hot poker; and, in my opinion, she was the most formidable of the party. The waiting maid brought up the rear, dreading to stay alone in the servants’ hall, smelling to a broken bottle of volatile salts, and expressing her terror of the ghosteses.
“Ghosts!” said my aunt resolutely, “I’ll singe their whiskers for them!”
They entered the chamber. All was still and undisturbed as when she left it. They approached the portrait of my uncle.
“Pull me down that picture!” cried my aunt.
A heavy groan, and a sound like the chattering of teeth, was heard from the portrait. The servants shrunk back. The maid uttered a faint shriek, and clung to the footman.
“Instantly!” added my aunt, with a stamp of the foot.
The picture was pulled down, and from a recess behind it, in which had formerly stood a clock, they hauled forth a round-shouldered, black-bearded varlet, with a knife as long as my arm, but trembling all over like an aspen leaf.
“Well, and who was he? No ghost, I suppose!” said the inquisitive gentleman.
“A knight of the post,” replied the narrator, “who had been smitten with the worth of the wealthy widow; or rather a marauding Tarquin, who had stolen into her chamber to violate her purse and rifle her strong box when all the house should be asleep. In plain terms,” continued he, “the vagabond was a loose idle fellow of the neighborhood, who had once been a servant in the house, and had been employed to assist in arranging it for the reception of its mistress. He confessed that he had contrived his hiding-place for his nefarious purposes, and had borrowed an eye from the portrait by way of a reconnoitering hole.”
“And what did they do with him — did they hang him?” resumed the questioner.
“Hang him? — how could they?” exclaimed a beetle-browed barrister, with a hawk’s nose—”the offence was not capital — no robbery nor assault had been committed — no forcible entry or breaking into the premises—”
“My aunt,” said the narrator, “was a woman of spirit, and apt to take the law into her own hands. She had her own notions of cleanliness also. She ordered the fellow to be drawn through the horsepond to cleanse away all offences, and then to be well rubbed down with an oaken towel.”
“And what became of him afterwards?” said the inquisitive gentleman.
“I do not exactly know — I believe he was sent on a voyage of improvement to Botany Bay.”
“And your aunt—” said the inquisitive gentleman—”I’ll warrant she took care to make her maid sleep in the room with her after that.”
“No, sir, she did better — she gave her hand shortly after to the roystering squire; for she used to observe it was a dismal thing for a woman to sleep alone in the country.”
“She was right,” observed the inquisitive gentleman, nodding his head sagaciously—”but I am sorry they did not hang that fellow.”
It was agreed on all hands that the last narrator had brought his tale to the most satisfactory conclusion; though a country clergyman present regretted that the uncle and aunt, who figured in the different stories, had not been married together. They certainly would have been well matched.
“But I don’t see, after all,” said the inquisitive gentleman, “that there was any ghost in this last story.”
“Oh, if it’s ghosts you want, honey,” cried the Irish captain of dragoons, “if it’s ghosts you want, you shall have a whole regiment of them. And since these gentlemen have been giving the adventures of their uncles and aunts, faith and I’ll e’en give you a chapter too, out of my own family history.”
THE BOLD DRAGOON
OR THE ADVENTURE OF MY GRANDFATHER.
My grandfather was a bold dragoon, for it’s a profession, d’ye see, that has run in the family. All my forefathers have been dragoons and died upon the field of honor except myself, and I hope my posterity may be able to say the same; however, I don’t mean to be vainglorious. Well, my grandfather, as I said, was a bold dragoon, and had served in the Low Countries. In fact, he was one of that very army, which, according to my uncle Toby, “swore so terribly in Flanders.” He could swear a good stick himself; and, moreover, was the very man that introduced the doctrine Corporal Trim mentions, of radical heat and radical moisture; or, in other words, the mode of keeping out the damps of ditch water by burnt brandy. Be that as it may, it’s nothing to the purport of my story. I only tell it to show you that my grandfather was a man not easily to be humbugged. He had seen service; or, according to his own phrase, “he had seen the devil” — and that’s saying everything.
Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was on his way to England, for which he intended to embark at Ostend; — bad luck to the place for one where I was kept by storms and head winds for three long days, and the divil of a jolly companion or pretty face to comfort me. Well, as I was saying, my grandfather was on his way to England, or rather to Ostend