sort—tales of wandering spirits and all that. I imagine it won't worry you much." He glanced from Ashton to myself with a quick smile of interrogation.

"Hardly," replied my companion, light[12]ing a cigarette. "I've outgrown ghosts. led on to the haunted chamber."

[12]

The Major turned to the servant. "Show the gentlemen to the two rooms in the west wing, Gibson. The green room will suit Mr. Ashton, I fancy, and perhaps Mr. Morgan will find the white and gold room across the hall comfortable for the night."

"Very good, Sir." The man turned toward the staircase and we followed him.

I found my room a large and fairly comfortable one, containing a great maple bed, a chest of drawers and other furniture of an old-fashioned sort. The place seemed stuffy with the peculiar dead atmosphere of rooms long closed, but I soon dispelled this by throwing open one of the windows upon that side of the room away from the force of the storm, and busied myself in making such preparations for dinner as I could with the few requisites which my small knapsack contained. I heard Ashton across the hall,[13] whistling merrily as he got into evening kit, and rather grumbled at myself for having been drawn into my present position as an unbidden and unprepared guest in the house of persons who were total strangers to me.

[13]

After a considerable time, I heard the musical notes of a Chinese gong which I took to be the signal for dinner, so making my way to the staircase with, I fear, a somewhat sheepish expression, I saw Ashton ahead of me, just joining at the end of the hallway a strikingly beautiful and distinguished-looking girl, of perhaps twenty-two or three, dressed in an evening gown of white, the very simplicity of which only served to accentuate the splendid lines of her figure. Her face was pale with that healthy pallor which is in some women so beautiful—a sort of warm ivory tint—and with her splendid eyes and wide brow, crowded with a mass of bronze-colored hair, I felt that even my critical artistic taste could with difficulty find a flaw. It[14] was evident that she and Mr. Ashton knew each other well, yet it seemed to me that Miss Temple, for so I supposed the young lady to be, did not respond with much cordiality to the effusive greeting which Mr. Ashton bestowed upon her. I descended the steps some distance behind them, and observed Major Temple standing in the center of the main hall, smiling with much apparent satisfaction at 

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