A light shone in the hallway behind the broad front doors; one of these
was opened, and revealed in silhouette the tall, thin figure of a man in
a long, old-fashioned dressing-gown.
"Simpledoria," he said, addressing the night air with considerable
severity, "I don't know what to make of you. You might have caught your
death of cold, roving out at such an hour. But there," he continued,
more indulgently; "wipe your feet on the mat and come in. You're safe
NOW!"
He closed the door, and I heard him call to some one up-stairs, as he
rearranged the fastenings:
"Simpledoria is all right--only a little chilled. I'll bring him up to
your fire."
I went on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost,
a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not
subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor
cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened
door. Was my "finest" house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts,
who came home to roost at four in the morning?
It was only a step to Mrs. Apperthwaite's; I let myself in with the key
that good lady had given me, stole up to my room, went to my window, and
stared across the yard at the house next door. The front window in the
second story, I decided, necessarily belonged to that room in which the
lamp had been lighted; but all was dark there now. I went to bed, and
dreamed that I was out at sea in a fog, having embarked on a transparent
vessel whose preposterous name, inscribed upon glass life-belts,
depending here and there from an invisible rail, was SIMPLEDORIA.
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