"Not go!" echoed the girl of the cottage, "not go! but this is the very weather to go in! Now, perhaps, you will all believe I fear nothing! and if there was need for it I would go bareheaded to Saint Peter Port in this deluge!" and she pointed to the sheets of rain which swept over the moorland.
Then a small, insignificant voice, coming from a woman who sat in the hearth corner, spoke irritably.
"You know, Ellenor, if your father was here, he would not let you play such tricks!"
Ellenor faced her mother with rebellion in every feature of her face.
"The girls have dared me to go to the Haunted House on this very night, and I'll go, mother, if I have to face the devil himself."
"Well, you must do as you please, it seems you always do!"
Without further words, Ellenor coiled tighter the thick hair that looked too heavy for her small head, stuck through it a dull gold pin, and stepped out into the small garden.
"It has stopped raining," she said sarcastically, "so who will go a little way, to see I don't cheat, but go, in reality, to the Haunted House?"
After a minute's hesitation, two or three of the girls followed her, but Blaisette, with a pretty pout, returned to the _jonquière_ by the hearth. Ellenor walked rapidly up the steep path to the summit of the cliff, then plunged into the darkness of the moorland. Winding in and out amongst gorze bushes, she reached at last a large patch of grass. She turned round to the girls who were huddling close to her.
"There! in two minutes I'll be to the Haunted House. Listen to the sea! We're close to the edge of the cliffs. Come, quick, let's run, who knows if I can burst open the door, if I won't see the devil. I would wish it, for my part! There'd be a chance to tell him what one thinks of him."
Her words wandered away into the night, for the girls, with cries of horror, had fled as if evil spirits pursued them.
With a mocking laugh, Ellenor hurried on, then gradually she slackened her pace. At last, she groped her way forward with outstretched hands, for it was horribly dark. Presently she touched the rough stone wall of some building and stopped and listened. Not a sound but the wild roar of the waves below the cliffs and the gradual lulling of the wind. She groped along the wall, till her hands fell a little lower, to a different surface. It was a short wooden door. She pushed against it, gently, but it did not yield. She felt it across and up and down. There was no latch and she could find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength. Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, and then she lost consciousness.