"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND. (Specially written for the Witness Ladies' Page.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2660, 8 March 1905, Page 75

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND. (Specially written for the Witness Ladies' Page.)

AN HOUR WITH THE CHILDREN.

They sat round the fire, waiting for the story. Someone had quoted Longfellow : - Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to "lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations Which is known as the children's hour — find they claimed attention. "Let it be a real ghost story, about a haunted- house," said one ; so we gave the story its title of — "The Haunted House on the Cliff." —

The house stood on a cliff overlooking the sea — a semi-detached house that had originally been built with the idea of letting to summer residents ; but visitors evidently found Heather Cottages too isolated, for the double house stood! so long untenanted^ gloomy, and overgrown with creepers behind its high walls that it was at last said to be haunted. It was 5 however, a fair enough spot in summer, commanding a view of the bay and leading by steps from the cliff to a sheltered cove, where sometimes children played castlebuilding on the sands, as children do ; or Pandered in autumn over the moor of purple heather or gathered flowers under the pines outside the garden wall ; but as the shadows lengthened, they slunk away, and, as they went, looked fearfully and half-expectantly at the unfriendly windows, and told, stories of the "ghost*' which had not lost in interest and awe since the. first telling, for whereas a time back wierd shadows had been seen passing and repassing the upper windows, it was now affirmed" that on moonlight nights the white form of a little girl was seen to stand at a •certain window and. look out to sea. The wierd moaning of the pines when the ■wind sighed through? their branches sent any belated youngster at a quick pace to. the light of the open road, with shuddering backward looks at the windows of the gabled roof.

One bright day in spring, when white •daisies and blue violets vied with each other for notice in the fields' and on the fragrant shady banks, and under the pines^lay a carpet of -tufted green bracken broken by clumps of yellow cowslips, the children were out with the bxmey - bees, „ sipping sweetness while the sun shone, and, coming boldly in the full daylight to thA haunted house on the cliff, ,w.ere amazed to observe signs of habitation. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, blinds were at the ■windows, and one of the two brown doors in tne wall stood open.

The children stared with unaffected and prolonged wonder ; there was no disguise about their surprise and curiosity. The open door in the wall, without the reassuring domestic evidence of curtained windows and smoking chimneys, would have been an added alarm, but reasoning from the fact that where there is smoke there must of necessity be fire, and whera there -is fire, especially in a grate, someone has almost as certainly lit it, they stood in a group and stared- So intent were they upon the use oftheir eyes that their sense of hearing was probably dulled, for they were startled bys a sudden appearance at the open garden door and the sharp, imperative command :

"Go away!"

A lean old man, with white hair and Iccird, stood before them, waving them ■off — a bent old man who wor.3-

A low-crowned ha,t with a very broad brim. But there his resemblance to Ingoldsby's hero ended, except that his green spectacles had a goldi?n rim ; but it seemed very improbable that anybody was "exceedingly fond of Mm." People who say "Go away!" on a first introduction are not, as a rule, overwhelmed with attentions.

But the "Grey Old Man," as the children called him, was an •exception. Whether it was the unexpectedness of his "advent or the distinction tb.3 ghost had conferred upon his house, or the green spectacles, or the wide-awake hat, or the fascination' of the hard old 1 face tinder the brim, or all combined, he act«d like a magnet, and wherever the Gr-ey Old Man went,- there, at a distance,, the children followed.

Hia movements were a source of unfailing interest. Whenever the children were fr&e they shadowed him like young detectives, and after a tim.? knew his habits and pursuits intimately. Ha lived alone, with the exception of" an old servant ; he never received visitors or went visiting, and, secluded as his house was, it did not seem secluded enough for his taste, for, with the view of shutting off still TnorA the house, joined to his own% he had built a trellis screen on top of the wall, over - which he trained the straggling creepers. He was very fond of flowers, "and " worked- for w,°eks together in his garden, which soon lost its wild), tangled appearance, and blossomed with all the season's flowers. This the children knew ■without a doubt, because he remained so often behind the garden wall with the door closed that, curiosity getting the bettfer of discretion, a boy scaled the wall, and saw the Grey Old Man working quietly among his roses, touching them with gentle lingers caressingly. This supervision worried) and anser.ed the old man. who scowled and muttered to himself whenever he chanced on an intruder on the domain of his seclusion. ; nor ■was his anger appeased when his housekeeper brought him the story of the ghost.

"They do be saving that it be the spirit of a little child, an' tnat at the fall of the "evening she do flit from the next house to this, an' sometimes when sly* isn't seen she do be heard crying, an' frequent of a moonlight night she do etand at the window and looks out to sen."

With the storms of the winter th^ children, like the bees, were driven home ;

the withered bracken lay sodden under the pines, and the little cove where in summer the children had built sand castles was swept by hissing foam. The cold reached the bones of the old woman who kept the house, and so twinged) and troubled her that her master, who was grateful for years of faithful service, took her to distant kinsfolk, for whom in her sickness she pined. The journey occupied two days, one for the going the other for the returning. And when the Grey Old Man came towards his home in the siLence of evening, for the first time the solitariness ,of the Haunted! House on the Cliff struck him with a sense of- chill. There was no one there to welcome him; no one to bz glad he had come. He turned to the beach road, reluctant to go in, and, sauntering on the sand, first looked seaward, where the waves made cradles for the moonbeams, then before ascending the steps in the cliff stopped and looked up at his solitary house. His gaze was arrested : he drew his breath sharply. At an upper window of the unoccupied house stood the white-robed figure of a child, looking out to sea. He strained his vision, but the apparition was gone. Then he laughed 1 discordantly, and went quickly up the steps, vexed with his momentary illusion, muttering to himself about the trick's played by the moonlight. The house was cold andi chill and unhcmelike, wanting ' th.e tendance of woman and the speech of child. After he had kindled a fire and lit his reading lamp, th/i Grey Old Man absorbed himself in a book. But science, was triumphant only for a time, then was deposed by memory, and longing and regret, and what the old man wished and thought was not summed up in the leather-bound volume before him. His thoughts were all about a child who had grown to womanhood and angered him, and' whom be had disowned. The wind moaning in the pines was like the sound) of her crying, or the crying of the little restless ghost that at nightfall was said to flit from the next house to his. He stirred the fire into a blaze, turned the lamp up higher, and took up his book. But he was not reading. Strange how the past should intrude itself to-night ! Strange now the foolish tale of the child apparition could trouble him. He lifted up his head and listened as though some sound had) startled him. Nearer and nearer and more distinct came the soft, quick, pitter-pat of a child's bare feet on the polished hall. He waited for what ho, should se.e, his eyes fixed on the door, which slowly opened, and for a moment there stood

A little fairy sprite In robes of white, then disappeared. The Grey Old Man stood up and shook himself like a dog after a plunge into water. He had been deluded by a trick of vision, of imagination ! Loneliness begat moodmess — he was developing nerves ! Isy sunrise the next morning h»e "was on the road, deter- ! mined to tramp circulation to his blood ! and reason to his brain. It was nightfall when he returned, and again the silence fell on him, like a pall. With a deep sigh he abandoned hisbook, and let sorrow have its will. So lost in painful reverie was he that he scarcely heard the on-com-ing pattering steps ; they paused at the door, then came nearer and nearer, till they stopped at his side. He turned swiftly. Thre stood the apparition of the night before ; two eyes of brown met his with supplication, looking out from a tangle of chestnut hair. A strange trembling seized the Grey Old Man as a | conflict of emotion swept over his heart, sweet memories warring with a past anger. "Who ar.e you?" he a-sked the sprite.

"I am Alice," answered she, in a sweet half-frightened voice. "Alice? — from Wonderland " "No. I am Alice from the house next door."

"How came you hi?re?"

"Through the door in the cupboard in my bedroom. It opens and lets you through." She smiled and nodded. "The dcor wasn't locked," she addted in extenuation.

"But how came you there — and in your nightdress? No one lives in the' house next door.''

"If you take me oni your knee my toes won't get cold,'" she suggested. "We've corned to live in* the house nes" door. We haven't got no curtings yet, an' we don't have no lights — only in the little room in the back where mummy sits. Igo to bed in the dark. I'm not frightened. The moon shines in. and it isn't really and truly dark. I haven't been a naughty girl. Mummy didn't tell me not to g*t up. My toes' is getting cold'"

Tenderly as he touched his roses, the Grey Old Man lifted the child to his knee, and stroked her hair.

"So you and mother and father have come to live in the house next to me?"

"Father lives in the sky."

So the little sprite was fatherless. He drew her to a closer shelter of his arm. But for some cruel words spoken in anger just such another brown-eyed prattler he might always have near. He sat so- long silent thai the child went to sleep with her head on his breast, and with his grey b»°ad bent over her his hot- tears fell on the soft hair. . And that is how his daughter found them. "Father, forgive! I have found you — I knew you were here. Do not send us away. You said that while my husband lived you would not willingly see my face again. When he was dying I promised him I would come. Se.? how soon little Alice has learned to love you."

So that was why, when the spiing came andi the children returned with thi bees, they were surprised to find the imaginary ghost had turned

into a real live girl, who romped a great j deal with the Grey Old Man, while a pretty lady sat in the garden and sewed. They" saw this without climbing the wall, for the door was frequently open, and as the dividing wall was taken down and the two houses thrown into one, and there was nothing mysterious about it, they rarely frequented its neighbourhood.