Poole's place.

"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes,
roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"

"You mean what Dot thought was a goat?" laughed the older girl. "I
believe you!" she went on, caught in the contagion of slang.

"That was before my time in Milton," said Neale, cheerfully. "But I have
heard how you Corner House girls laid the ghost that had haunted the old
place so long."

[Illustration: They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a welcome
from the gateposts. Page 173]

"I believe Uncle Peter must have known what it really was," said Ruth,
thoughtfully. "But it delighted him, I suppose, to have people talk
about the old house, and be afraid to visit him. He was a recluse."

"And a miser, they say," Neale observed bluntly.

"I don't think we should say that," Ruth replied quickly. "Everybody
tried to get money from Uncle Peter. Everybody but our mother and
father, I guess. That is why he left most everything to us."

"Well," Agnes said, "they all declared he haunted the place himself
after he died."

"That's a wicked story!" Ruth sharply exclaimed. "I don't believe there
is such a thing as a ghost, anyway!"

"And you, going to a ghost party right now?" cried Neale, laughing.

"These will be play ghosts," returned Ruth.

"Oh, _will_ they? You just wait and see," chuckled the boy, for he and
his close chum, Joe Eldred, were masters of ceremonies, and they had
promised to startle Carrie and her guests with "real Hallowe'en ghosts."

Before the Corner House girls and their escort reached the top of the
hill on which the Poole house stood they saw the two huge pumpkin
lanterns grinning a welcome from the gateposts. There was a string of
smaller Hallowe'en lanterns across the porch before the entrance to the
house. And every time anybody pushed open the gate, a ghostly
apparition with a glowing head rose up most astonishingly behind the
porch railing to startle the visitor.

Neale and Joe had been at the house all the afternoon, putting up these
and other bits of foolery. Joe's father, who was superintendent of the
Milton Electric Light Company, allowed his son considerable freedom in
the shops. Joe and Neale had brought out a good-sized battery outfit and
the necessary wires and attachments; and when the girls stopped on the
mat at the door to remove their overshoes, each got a distinct shock, to
the great delight of the earlier guests who stood in the hall