"And the same in the morning?"

"I'll do my best."

"Off with you, then! I'll come to the door, and stand there, in case you're challenged by anybody."

"There's little fear of that in Elmdale at this hour," she said, with a new cheerfulness. He turned, ostensibly to pick up the electric torch. She was out in the hall instantly; when he rejoined her she was wearing the mackintosh.

"Good-night!" she said. "Next to dad, you're the nicest man I've ever met, and I don't even know your name."

"I'll introduce myself at breakfast," he growled, extinguishing the torch as he opened the door. He watched her swift run down the curving path to the gate, and heard her footsteps as she hurried into the village street. The night was so still that he knew when she turned into the front garden of the cottage, and he caught the tapping on a window, which, beginning timidly, soon grew more emphatic, perhaps more desperate.

Some minutes passed. He could see the back of the cottage, and no gleam of light shone in any of its tiny windows. Then followed some decided thumping on a door, but the tenement might have been an empty barn for all the response that was forthcoming.

Finally, he was aware of slow feet climbing dejectedly up the hill, and the garden gate creaked.

"I can't make anybody hear," wailed a tearful voice.

Armathwaite was even more surprised than the girl at this dramatic verification of his prophecy, but he availed himself of it as unscrupulously as any Delphic oracle.

"I told you so," he said. "Now, come in and go to bed!"

CHAPTER IV

SHOWING HOW EXPLANATIONS DO NOT ALWAYS EXPLAIN

Though weary and distrait, Marguérite Garth was of too frank a disposition to allow such an extraordinary incident to pass without comment. She halted in the porch by Armathwaite's side, and gazed blankly at the silent cottage.

"You spoke of a ghost," she murmured brokenly. "I'm beginning to think myself that I am bewitched. What can have happened? Why won't Betty or her mother let me in?"

"I'll have much pleasure in clearing up that trivial 

 Prev. P 34/167 next