The big black limousine driven by a uniformed chauffeur was coming from the left, much too fast for so narrow a lane. Aunt Effie’s wide and always uncertain turn out of the gate to the left covered much more than her half of the road, just where the branches of the old oak overhung the hedge. There was a blast of the limousine’s horn, a grinding of brakes, a thudding crash, and then a sharp, snapped-off scream.

The nose of the big limousine was jammed into the side of the smaller car, which was tilted at a crazy angle with two wheels clear of the ground. The chauffeur, who was merely shaken up a little and whose glass was all intact, jumped out and ran, white-faced, to where Sabrina had been thrown clear, into the ditch.

She lay very still, face down. As he turned her over and raised her in his arms, Mrs. Pilton came running down the drive, and Father limped towards them, dabbing with his handkerchief at a long cut in his cheek from the broken windscreen. Aunt Effie had quietly fainted behind the wheel, and Bella was up on the seat beside her, whimpering and trying to lick her face.

Father stood staring down at the chauffeur’s quiet burden.

“She was in the back,” he was saying in a dazed, apologetic sort of way. “There was nothing for her to hold to—she must have been shot out on her head. Is she all right?” He peered suddenly into the man’s rigid face, in growing apprehension. “Is she all right?” he insisted.

“I—don’t know,” said the chauffeur between stiff lips. “I — can’t be sure.”

“Hilary — Hilary, where are you?” She had reached the second flight of stairs already, on her way to him. “Hilary, something’s happened — I don’t have to go, after all—”

Then she saw him.

* * * * * * * *

A GENERATION FROM NOW, on a summer day, three village children will come along the lane and pause at the sagging gate of Nuns Farthing, gazing in at the riot of untended bloom which was once the herbaceous border. And one of them, a visiting cousin from the next county, will express a desire to pilfer such lovely flowers, all going to waste on an empty house where the window glass is latticed by uncut tendrils of Virginia creeper, where a top-floor shutter is flung wide to the sunlight, and the casement stands open in the June heat.

“Come away, Mildred, do!” the others will advise her in lowered tones, dragging her back from the weed-grown drive into the lane again. “We never go there—it’s haunted!”

About the Author

Elswyth Thane was born Helen Ricker in Burlington, Iowa, on May 16, 1900. Her father, Maurice Ricker, became principal of West High School in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906, and there young Helen learned to love drama. The family spent many summers in England.