n't git to the place, then this here seemin'
comes. An' ef he's dead and gone--why you'll see his ha'nt."

"They's jest three of us," whispered Pendrilla. "Three is the right
number--but I know in my soul I'd be scared till I wouldn't be no manner
of use to anybody."

"Hit's comin' close to Hollow Eve," suggested Cliantha. "That's the time
to hold a dumb supper ef one ever should be held. Hit'll work then, ef it
wouldn't on no other night of the year."

"It has to be held in a desarted house," Pendrilla reiterated the
condition. "Ef you was to hold a dumb supper, Jude, we could go to the
old Bonbright house itse'f--ef we had any way to git in."

"I've got the key," said Judith scarcely above her breath. "Creed left it
with me away last April, to get things for the--for the play-party."

Chapter XXIII

The Dumb Supper

It was the thirty-first of October, All Souls' eve, that mystic point of
contact between the worlds when quick and dead are fabled to walk the
ways of earth together, to meet eye to eye, and hold converse. A web of
mountain legend clings dimly about this season.

The spirit of it--weird, elfin--was abroad, the air was full of it as,
alone out in the gusty darkness of the autumn night, at eleven o'clock,
Judith walked swiftly toward the Lusk place. Wrapped in a little packet
she carried bread and salt, and a length of candle. She went across
fields, and thus cut down the distance till it was possible to walk it in
fifteen minutes.

As she approached the house, Speaker, a barely grown hound-pup, came
rollicking out to meet her, leaping about her shoulder-high, frisking
back toward the porch and waiting for her, all the while barking
joyously.

"My Lord!" said Pendrilla's sleepy small voice when Judith tapped on
their window in the wing of the building where the girls roomed. "Ef that
thar fool hound-pup ain't loose! I hope he don't wake up Grandpap. Cain't
you make him hush, Judith?"

Judith stooped and caressed the dog for a moment, quieting him. The girls
presently appeared in the doorway fully dressed and, as it seemed, with
their packets made, in addition to which Cliantha carried an old lantern
unlighted in her hand.

"I'll light it as soon as we get out in the road," she announced
whisperingly.

When they would have secured the dog that he might not follow them, they
found that he, wise for his age, had disappeared.

"I bet he's run down the road apiece; he'll be a-hidin' in t