d never look
at me! And one day--" she stopped, and as though appalled by the memory,
clasped her hands. "Oh, it was awful!" she exclaimed; "one day a foul
ball hit the fence, and I jumped down and threw it to you, and you said,
Thank you, sis! And I," she cried, "thought I was a young lady!"

"Oh! I couldn't have said that," protested Winthrop, "maybe I said
sister."

"No," declared Vera energetically shaking her head, "not sister, sis.
And you never did look at me; and I used to drive past your house every
day. We lived only a mile below you."

"Where?" asked Winthrop.

"On the lake road from Syracuse," said Vera. "Don't you remember the
farm a mile below yours--the one with the red barn right on the road?
Yes, you do," she insisted, "the cows were always looking over the fence
right into the road."

"Of course!" exclaimed Winthrop delightedly. "Was that your house?"

"Oh, no," protested Vera, "ours was the little cottage on the other
side--"

"With poplars round it?" demanded Winthrop.

"That's it!" cried Vera triumphantly, "with poplars round it."

"Why, I know that house well. We boys used to call it the haunted
house."

"That's the one," assented Vera. She smiled with satisfaction. "Well,
that's where I lived until Aunt died," she said.

"And then, what?" asked Winthrop.

For a moment the girl did not answer. Her face had grown grave and she
sat motionless, staring beyond her. Suddenly, as though casting her
thoughts from her, she gave a sharp toss of her head.

"Then," she said, speaking quickly, "I went into the mills, and was ill
there, and I wrote Paul and Mabel to ask if I could join them, and they
said I could. But I was too ill, and I had no money--nothing. And then,"
she raised her eyes to his and regarded him steadily, "then I stole that
cloak to get the money to join them, and you--you helped me to get away,
and--and" Winthrop broke in hastily. He disregarded both her manner and
the nature of what she had said.

"And how did you come to know the Vances?" he asked.

After a pause of an instant, the girl accepted the cue his manner gave
her, and answered as before.

"Through my aunt," she said, "she was a medium too."

"Of course!" cried Winthrop. "I remember now, that's why we called it
the haunted house."

"My aunt," said the girl, regarding him steadily and with, in her
manner, a certain defiance, "was a great medium. All the spiritualists
in that part of the State used to meet a