Rafael Sabatini

“ You will say that I am a coward, and that a man of my temperament has no right to undertake the investigation of supernatural matters. Perhaps so. Anyway, I did not need to be twice invited to shut that door. Had it remained open, I should no more have been able to stay in the ante-chamber than to return to the tapestried room now that I had left it.
So I closed the door, and returned to my seat by the fire. Soon, as my pulses grew calmer, I began to feel ashamed of myself. And then I heard Edgeworth's steps approaching the door of communication. ”

“ Then, with a sudden smile, he turned to me again. "I will consent, Dennison," he said, "provided that you have a companion. Now, Edgeworth here, who professes to fear neither man nor devil, who sniffs at the very mention of ghosts—"
"Done with you," Edgeworth interrupted eagerly. "We'll hunt this ghost together, Dennison—and, bedad! we'll lay it."
The ladies protested in a body, and Philip was their ally in this. But Sir James, thoroughly stung by the contemptuousness of Edgeworth's disbelief in the family ghost, encouraged the notion now that the colonel was to bear me company in that vigil. ”

“ You see, 'tisn't cowardly to be scared, Dennison, but it's infernally cowardly to run away when you're scared; and Jack Edgeworth isn't going to turn coward—not for all the disembodied Jacobites in the universe." And with that he swung on his heel, and marched back into the tapestried chamber, slamming the door after him. ”

“ Your nerves have mutinied, and you've been imagining things."
"Did I imagine the taps on the shutters?" I asked him.
"The devil take the taps on the shutters!" said he. But for all his jauntiness, he spilled some of the brandy in pouring for me.
I drained the glass gladly enough.
"Another?" he questioned, raising the decanter again. "It's the very distilled essence of courage."
I refused, and again I begged him to remain with me. But he would not, and he explained his obstinacy.
"The fact of the matter is, Dennison, that it's frightened I am, myself. I am quite frank. ”

“ I could swear that the lines in which they fell had undergone a change.
"I wish to Heaven they had given us more light," I burst out nervously. "The gloom is a trifle uncanny when one thinks of the associations of the place." ”

“ Thus reinforced, I led the way into that room of horror. They checked a moment at the sight that met them. Then the butler approached the body, whilst I held the lamp on high. He knelt a moment beside Edgeworth. ”

“ Hampton—the sister who kept house for Sir James—mildly repulsed the soldier's suggestion.
"Indeed, no, Colonel Edgeworth," she said. "The tapestried room is by no means given over to rats, as you seem to suppose. Whilst precisely as it was in the eighteenth century, at the time of the event of which we are speaking, it is, nevertheless, in every way kept just as if it were being occupied to-day."
The door opened at this moment, and the butler ushered in a couple of footmen bearing lamps and candles. ”

“ To receive and shelter a rebel was a very dangerous thing; but when sentiment prompts them, women can be very reckless. She gave him the shelter he begged, and announced him as a cousin to her household. But it happened that the messengers were hot upon his scent, and on the following evening, as Lady Evangeline and her Jacobite were sitting down to supper, in comes a lieutenant with a posse of red-coats, and my fine Jacobite was carried off and lodged in Preston Gaol. ”