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They seemed so continually on the point of unravelling the mystery, only to find themselves again defeated and baffled. Cicely was tempted to throw it up altogether in despair, but Lindsay had a native obstinacy of disposition that could not bear to be beaten. "I shall go on trying as long as we're at Haversleigh, on that I'm entirely resolved," she declared.
The story runs that his ghost haunts Haversleigh Tower and walks up the belfry stairs, but of course that's nothing but superstition and nonsense." "Don't you believe in ghosts?" asked Cicely, who was sometimes a little afraid of the dark passages at the Manor.
Cross and all the people who have called on her at Haversleigh, so we shall have plenty of spectators." "I wish Mrs. Courtenay could come," exclaimed Cicely. "I wish indeed she could. I'm afraid she must be worse to-day, as Monica was not at the history class," said Mildred. All the girls were busy "getting into good form", as they expressed it.
"Look how yellow the paper is, and there are actually long S's. Someone has scribbled notes all round the edges of the pages." "I wonder if it was Sir Giles Courtenay?" said Lindsay. Cicely turned to the flyleaf at the beginning. Yes, in exactly the same rather straggling hand was the inscription: "GILES PEMBERTON COURTENAY, HAVERSLEIGH MANOR, SOMERSET."
A winter in the south would work wonders, and, if my treatment is thoroughly carried out, she should return to Haversleigh in the spring with restored health." It was an intense relief to be thus reassured. Monica felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her mind. When the doctors had finally taken their departure, she ran to share her good news with her friends at the Manor.
It is with these two, and their strange experiences at the Manor, that my tale is chiefly concerned, for if it had not been for Lindsay's enquiring mind, backed by Cicely's persistent efforts, there might have been no story to tell. This is how it all began. On the second morning after their instalment at Haversleigh the whole school was assembled ready for a history class in the big dining-hall.
In fact, as Miss Russell often remarked, they gave a finishing touch to the whole scene, and made the Manor look more than ever like a medieval picture. The village of Haversleigh was only ten minutes' walk from the lodge gates.
"Was it really in Haversleigh Church that Sir Mervyn climbed into the belfry and was killed?" "Or did the writer make that up?" "No, that is true too," replied Monica. "The tower is still called 'Sir Mervyn's Tower', and it is said there is the stain of his blood on the great bell, and that nothing can ever take it off." "Have you seen it?" "Yes, once. It's only a patch of rust."
"Here we are at last!" announced Miss Russell, when, after many false alarms, the welcome word "Haversleigh" made its appearance in plain letters, and a porter's voice was heard pronouncing something which bore a faint resemblance to the name. "Steady, girls! Steady! Remember each is to take her own bag, and file out in proper order. Nobody is to move until I say 'March!"
He was cordially hated in Haversleigh, the inhabitants of which were Yorkists to a man, but he had garrisoned himself so strongly in the Manor, with so formidable a band of retainers, that the wretched villagers could do no more than groan under his oppressions, and bewail the advent of the day when, by his marriage with the unwilling Catharine, he would become their legal lord.
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