eeper.

"Here is your bath," opening a door into the anteroom. "I will place a
note upon Mr. Starkweather's desk saying that you are here. Will you need
your trunk up to-night, Miss?"

"Oh, no, indeed," Helen declared. "I have a kimono here--and other things.
I'll be glad of the bath, though. One does get so dusty traveling."

She was unlocking her bag. For a moment she hesitated, half tempted to
take the housekeeper into her confidence regarding her money. But the
woman went directly to the door and bowed herself out with a stiff:

"Good-night, Miss."

"My! But this is a friendly place!" mused Helen, when she was left alone.
"And they seem to have so much confidence in strangers!"

Therefore, she went to the door into the hall, found there was a bolt upon
it, and shot it home. Then she pulled the curtain across the keyhole
before sitting down and counting all her money over again.

"They got _me_ doing it!" muttered Helen. "I shall be afraid of every
person I meet in this man's town."

But by and by she hopped up, hid the wallet under her pillow (the bed was
a big one with deep mattress and downy pillows) and then ran to let her
bath run in the little room where Mrs. Olstrom had snapped on the electric
light.

She undressed slowly, shook out her garments, hung them properly to air,
and stepped into the grateful bath. How good it felt after her long and
tiresome journey by train!

But as she was drying herself on the fleecy towels she suddenly heard a
sound outside her door. After the housekeeper left her the whole building
had seemed as silent as a tomb. Now there was a steady rustling noise in
the short corridor on which her room opened.

"What _did_ that woman ask me?" murmured Helen. "Was I afraid of ghosts?"

She laughed a little. To a healthy, normal, outdoor girl the supernatural
had few terrors.

"It _is_ a funny sound," she admitted, hastily finished the drying process
and then slipping into her nightrobe, kimono, and bed slippers.

All the time her ear seemed preternaturally attuned to that rising and
waning sound without her chamber. It seemed to come toward the door, pass
it, move lightly away, and then turn and repass again. It was a steady,
regular----

_Step--put; step--put; step--put----_

And with it was the rustle of garments--or so it seemed. The girl grew
momentarily more curious. The mystery of the strange sound certainly was
puzzling.

"Who ever heard of a ghost with a wooden l