The Haunted Room: A Tale. A. L. O. E.

might have been expected. Down went pony and chaise, down went driver and lady, precipitated into the ditch which bordered the high-road.

      CHAPTER IX.

      NEW ACQUAINTANCE

      Vibert shouting for help, Emmie shrieking, the pony kicking and struggling in vain attempts to scramble out of the ditch, rain rattling, thunder rolling, all made a confused medley of sounds, while the deepening darkness was ever and anon lit up by lightning-flashes.

      “Oh, Vibert! dear Vibert! are you hurt?” cried the terrified Emmie, with whom personal fear did not counterbalance anxiety for her young brother’s safety.

      “I’m not hurt; I lighted on a bramble-bush; I’ve got off with a few scratches,” answered Vibert, who had regained the road. “But where on earth are you, Emmie? Can’t you manage to get up?”

      “No,” gasped Emmie; “the chaise keeps me down. Oh, there is the lightning again!” and she shrieked.

      “Never mind the lightning,” cried Vibert impatiently. “How am I to get the pony on his legs? he’s kicking like mad; and, oh! do stop screaming, Emmie, you’re enough to drive any one wild. It was your pull and your shrieking that did all the mischief.”

      Vibert had had little experience with horses, and to release, almost in darkness, a kicking pony from its traces, or set free a lady imprisoned by an overturned chaise, were tasks for which he had neither sufficient presence of mind nor personal strength. Glad would the poor lad then have been to have had Bruce beside him, Bruce with his firm arm and his strong sense, and that quiet self-possession which it seemed as if nothing could shake. Vibert felt in the emergency as helpless as a girl might have done. Now he pulled at the upturned wheel of the chaise, but without lifting it even an inch; then he caught up the whip which had dropped from his hand in the shock of the fall, but he knew not whether to use it would not but make matters worse. Vibert ran a few paces to seek for assistance, stopped irresolute, then hurried back, thinking it unmanly to leave his sister alone in her helpless condition.