nfortunate impression, but I came on the most innocent errand. I am
staying with Mr Trelawney, and your father was kind enough to offer to
lend me a mount for to-morrow. We thought of going for a long ride in
the morning, so--"

Esmeralda's hands fell to her sides. The commonplace explanation did
more than a hundred protestations, and a remembrance of the Major's
rhapsodies over the handsome young Englishman whom he had met but a week
before was still fresh in her mind. She stepped back, but the light in
her eyes gleamed more threateningly than before, as with tragic attitude
she turned towards the staircase. On the lowest step crouched Pixie,
all eyes and gaping mouth; on the third Mademoiselle clasped her hands,
and wagged her head from side to side, as if calling someone to witness
that she at least was innocent of offence; from between the banisters
peered a red, questioning face, audacious, yet vaguely alarmed.

"Patrick O'Shaughnessy," said Esmeralda in an awful voice, "you shall
pay for this evening's work!" and at that, audacity triumphed, and Pat
retorted sharply--

"But not with the racket, me dear, for ye did howl after all. We heard
you right up in the schoolroom. You're not the hero you thought
yourself, to mistake an innocent gentleman for a midnight assassin."

"Pat, be quiet!" interrupted Bridgie sharply, then turned to the
stranger with that winsome smile which was her greatest charm. "You've
been a schoolboy yourself, and know the ways of them. My brother never
rests out of mischief, and he dared my sister Joan to walk the round of
the Castle in the dark. She was dressed up as you see, and he had seen
you down here in your white coat, and thought maybe you would each be
startled by the sight of the other."

"And at first she wouldn't go at all, and was only laughing at him for
his pains, but Pat said Christmas Eve and Hallowe'en were all the same,
and that if a girl went alone by herself in the moonlight she would see
the spirit of her future h---" cried Pixie in one breathless sentence.
In her opinion Bridgie's explanation had been singularly inadequate, and
she was filled with indignation at the babel of sounds which drowned her
conclusion. Bridgie was seized with a paroxysm of coughing,
Mademoiselle with admirable promptitude knocked an old metal cup from a
bracket, and sent it clanging to the floor, and Pat cried shrilly--

"See a spook! She was dressed all in white, and you said y