Situated at Yaquina, on the coast
      of Oregon, is an old, deserted lighthouse. It stands upon a promontory
      that juts out dividing the bay from the ocean, and is exposed
      to every wind that blows. Its weather-beaten walls are wrapped
      in mystery. Of an afternoon when the fog comes drifting in from
      the sea and completely envelopes the lighthouse, and then stops
      in its course as if its object had been attained, it is the loneliest
      place in the world. At such times those who chance to be in the
      vicinity hear a moaning sound like the cry of one in pain, and
      sometimes a frenzied call for help pierces the death-like stillness
      of the waning day. Far out at sea, ships passing in the night
      are often guided in their course by a light that gleams from
      the lantern tower where no lamp is ever trimmed.

      
In the days when Newport
      was but a handful of cabins, roughly built, and flanked by an
      Indian camp, across the bar there sailed a sloop, grotesquely
      rigged and without a name. The arrival of a vessel was a rare
      event, and by the time the stranger had dropped anchor abreast
      the village the whole population were gathered on the strip of
      sandy beach to welcome her. She was manned by a swarthy crew,
      and her skipper was a beetle-browed ruffian with a scar across
      his cheek from mouth to ear. A boat was lowered, and in it a
      man about 40 years of age, accompanied by a young girl, were
      rowed ashore.

      
The man was tall and dark, and
      his manner and speech indicated gentle breeding. He explained
      that the sloop's water casks were empty, and was directed to
      the spring that poured down the face of the yellow sandstone
      cliff a few yards up the beach. Issuing instructions in some
      heathenish, unfamiliar tongue to the boatmen, he devoted himself
      to asking and answering questions. The sloop was bound down the
      coast to Coos Bay. She had encountered rough weather off the
      Columbia river bar, and had been driven far out of her course.
      To the young lady, his daughter, the voyage proved most trying.
      She was not a good sailor. If, therefore, accommodations could
      be secured, he wished to leave her ashore until the return of
      the sloop a fortnight later.

      
The landlady of the Abbey
      Hotel had a room to spare, and by the time the water casks were
      filled, arrangements had been completed which resulted in the
      transfer of the fair traveler's luggage from the sloop to the
      "hotel." The father bade his daughter an affectionate
      adieu, and was rowed back to the vessel, which at once weighed
      anchor and sailed away in the golden dusk of the summer evening.

      
Muriel, that was the
      name she gave, Muriel Trevenard, was a delicate looking, fair-haired
      girl still in her teens, very sweet and sunny tempered. She seemed
      to take kindly to her new environment, accepting its rude inconveniences
      as a matter of course, though all her own belongings testified
      to the fact that she was accustomed to the refinements and even
      luxuries of civilization. She spent many hours each day idling
      with a sketch block and pencil in that grassy hollow in the hill,
      seaward from the town, or strolled upon the beach or over the
      wind-swept uplands. The fortnight lengthened to a month and yet
      no sign of the sloop, or any sail rose above the horizon to southward.

      
"You've no cause
      to worry," said the landlady. "Your father's safe enough.
      No rough weather since he sailed, and as for time - a ship's
      time is as uncertain as a woman's temper, I've heard my own father
      say."

      
"Oh I am not anxious,
      " replied Muriel, "not in the least."

      
It was in August that a party
      of pleasure seekers came over the Coast Range and pitched their
      tents in the grassy hollow. They were a merry company, and they
      were not long in discovering Muriel.

      
"Such a pretty girl,"
      exclaimed Cora May, who was herself so fair that she could afford
      to be generous. "I am sure she does not belong to anybody
      about here. We must coax her to come to our camp."

      
But the girl needed little
      coaxing. She found these light-hearted young people a pleasant
      interruption, and she was enthusiastically welcomed by all, young
      and old alike. She joined them in their ceaseless excursions,
      and made one of the group that gathered nightly around the camp
      fire. There was one, a rather serious-minded youth, who speedily
      constituted himself her cavalier. He was always at hand to help
      her into the boat, to bait her hook when they went fishing, and
      to carry her shawl, or book or sketch block, and she accepted
      these attentions as she seemed to accept all else, naturally
      and sweetly.

      
The Cape Foulweather
      light had just been completed, and the house upon the bluff above
      Newport was deserted. Some member of the camping party proposed
      one Sunday afternoon that they pay it a visit.

      
"We have seen everything
      else there is to see," remarked Cora May.

      
"It is just an ordinary
      house with a lantern on top," objected Muriel. "You
      can get a good view of it from the bay. Besides it is probably
      locked up."

      
"Somebody has the
      key. We can soon find out who," said Harold Welch. "And
      we haven't anything else to do."

      
Accordingly they set
      out in a body to find the key. It was in the possession of the
      landlady's husband who had been appointed to look after the premises.
      He said he had not been up there lately, and seemed surprised
      after a mild fashion that anyone should feel an interest in an
      empty house, but he directed them how to reach it.

      
"You go up that
      trail to the top of the hill and you'll strike the road, but
      you won't find anything worth seeing after you get there. It
      ain't anywhere like the new light."

      
With much merry talk
      and laughter they climbed the hill and found the road, a smooth
      and narrow avenue overshadowed by dark young pines, winding along
      the hill-top to the rear of the house.

      
It stood in a small enclosure
      bare of vegetation. The sand was piled in little wind-swept heaps
      against the board fence. There was a walk paved with brick, leading
      from the gate around to the front where two or three steps went
      up to a square porch with seats on either side. Harold Welch
      unlocked the door, and they went into the empty hall that echoed
      dismally to the sound of human voices. Rooms opened from this
      hallway on either hand and in the L at the back were the kitchen,
      storerooms and pantry, a door that gave egress to a narrow veranda,
      and another shutting off the cellar.

      
At the rear of the hall
      the stairs led up to the second floor which was divided like
      the first into plain, square rooms. But the stairway went on,
      winding up to a small landing where a window looked out to northward,
      and from which a little room, evidently a linen closet, opened
      opposite the window. There was nothing extraordinary about this
      closet at the first glance. It was well furnished with shelves
      and drawers, and its only unoccupied wall space was finished
      with a simple wainscoting.

      
"Why," cried
      one, as they crowded the landing and overflowed into the closet,
      "this house seems to be failing to pieces." He pulled
      at a section of the wainscoting and it came away in his hand.
      "Hello! what's this? Iron walls?"

      
"It's hollow,"
      said another, tapping the smooth black surface disclosed by the
      removal of the panel.

      
"So it is,"
      cried the first speaker. "I wonder what's behind it? Why
      it opens! "

      
It was a heavy piece
      of sheet iron about three feet square. He moved it to one side,
      set it against the wall, and peered into the aperture.


 

      
"How mysterious!"
      exclaimed Muriel, leaning forward to look into the dark closet,
      whose height and depth exactly corresponded to the dimensions
      of the panel. It went straight back some six or eight feet and
      then dropped abruptly into what seemed a soundless well. One,
      more curious than the rest, crawled in and threw down lighted
      bits of paper.

      
"It goes to the
      bottom of the sea," he declared, as he backed out and brushed
      the dust from his clothes. "Who knows what it is, or why
      it was built?"

      
"Smugglers,"
      suggested somebody and they all laughed, though there was nothing
      particularly humorous in the remark. But they were strangely
      nervous and excited. There was something uncanny in the atmosphere
      of this deserted dwelling that oppressed them with an unaccountable
      sense of dread. They hurried out leaving the dark closet open,
      and climbed up into the lantern tower where no lamp has been
      lighted these many years.

      
The afternoon, which
      had been flooded with sunshine, was waning in a mist that swept
      in from the sea and muffled the world in dull grey.

      
"Let us go home,"
      cried Cora May. "If it were clear we might see almost to
      China from this tower, but the fog makes me lonesome."

      
So they clambered down
      the iron ladder and descending the stairs, passed out through
      the lower hall into the grey fog. Harold Welch stopped to lock
      the door, and Muriel waited for him at the foot of the steps.
      The lock was rusty, and he had trouble with the key. By the time
      he joined her, the rest of the party had disappeared around the
      house.

      
"You are kind to
      wait for me," said he, as they caught step on the brick
      pavement and moved forward. But Muriel laid her hand upon his
      arm.

      
"I must go back,"
      she said. "I--I--dropped my handkerchief in--the--hall upstairs,
      I must go back and get it."

      
They remounted the steps,
      and Welch unlocked the door and let her pass in. But when he
      would have followed, she stopped him imperiously.

      
"I am going alone,"
      she said. "You are not to wait. Lock the door and go on.
      I will come out through the kitchen." He objected, but she
      was obstinate, and, perhaps because her lightest wish was beginning
      to be his law of life, he reluctantly obeyed her. Again the key
      hung in the lock. This time it took him several minutes to release
      it. When he reached the rear of the house Muriel was nowhere
      to be seen. He called her two or three times and waited, but,
      receiving no reply, concluded that she had hurried out and joined
      the rest whose voices came back to him from the avenue of pines.
      She had been nervous and irritable all the afternoon, so unlike
      herself that he had wondered more than once if she were ill,
      or weary of his close attendance. It occurred to him now that
      possibly she had taken this means to rid herself of his company.

      
He hurried on, for it was growing
      cold and the fog was thickening to a rain. He had just caught
      up with the stragglers of the party, and they were beginning
      to chafe him at being alone, when the somber stillness of the
      darkening day was rent by a shriek so wild and weird that they
      who heard it felt the blood freeze suddenly in their veins. They
      shrank involuntarily closer and looked at each other with blanched
      cheeks and startled eyes. Before anyone found voice it came again.
      This time it was a cry for help, thrice repeated in quick succession.

      
"Muriel! Where is
      Muriel?" demanded Welch, his heart leaping in sudden fear.

      
"Why you ought to
      know," cried Cora May. "We left her with you."
      They hurried toward the deserted house.

      
"She went back to
      get her handkerchief," explained Welch. "She told me
      not to wait, and I locked the door and came on."

      
"Locked her in that
      horrid place! Why did you do it?" exclaimed Cora, indignantly.

      
"She said she would
      come out by way of the kitchen," replied he.

      
"She could not.
      The door is locked, and the key is broken off in the lock,"
      said another. "I noticed it when we were rummaging around
      in there."

      
They began to call encouragingly,
      "Muriel, we are coming. Don't be afraid." But they
      got no reply.

      
"Oh let us hurry,
      " urged Cora, "perhaps she has fainted with fright."

      
In a very few minutes
      they were pouring into the house and looking and calling through
      the lower rooms. Then up stairs, and there, upon the floor in
      the upper chamber, where the grey light came in through the curtain-less
      windows, they found a pool of warm, red blood. There were blood
      drops in the hall and on the stairs that led up to the landing,
      and in the linen closet they picked up a bloodstained handkerchief.
      But there was nothing else. The iron door had been replaced,
      and the panel in the wainscoting closed, and try as they might,
      they could not open it. They were confronted by an apparent tragedy,
      appalled by a fearful mystery, and they could do nothing, nothing.

      
They returned to the
      village and gave the alarm, and reinforced, came back and renewed
      the hopeless search with lanterns. They ransacked the house again
      and again from tower to cellar. They scoured the hills in the
      vain delusion that she might have escaped from the house and
      wandered off in the fog. But they found nothing, nor ever did,
      save the blood drops on the stairs and the little handkerchief.

      
"It will be a dreadful
      blow to her father," remarked the landlady of the Abbey
      Hotel, "I don't want to be the one to break it to him."
      And she had her wish, for the sloop nor any of its crew ever
      again sailed into Yaquina Bay. As time went by, the story was
      forgotten by all but those who joined in that weary search for
      the missing girl.

      
But to this day it is
      said the blood-stains are dark upon the floor in that upper chamber.
      And one there was who carried the little handkerchief next to
      his heart till the hour of his own tragic death.

      
The
      End