that gray veil. If ever the dear dead ladies of
this little house came back to revisit it they would come on just such
a night as this. If I sit here any longer I'll see one of them there
opposite me in Gilbert's chair. This place isn't exactly canny
tonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air of pricking up their ears to
hear the footsteps of unseen guests. I'll run over to see Leslie
before I frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago in the
matter of the Haunted Wood. I'll leave my house of dreams to welcome
back its old inhabitants. My fire will give them my good-will and
greeting--they will be gone before I come back, and my house will be
mine once more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the past."

Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of a creepy
sensation in the region of her spine, Anne kissed her hand to Gog and
Magog and slipped out into the fog, with some of the new magazines
under her arm for Leslie.

"Leslie's wild for books and magazines," Miss Cornelia had told her,
"and she hardly ever sees one. She can't afford to buy them or
subscribe for them. She's really pitifully poor, Anne. I don't see
how she makes out to live at all on the little rent the farm brings in.
She never even hints a complaint on the score of poverty, but I know
what it must be. She's been handicapped by it all her life. She
didn't mind it when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now,
believe ME. I'm glad she seemed so bright and merry the evening she
spent with you. Captain Jim told me he had fairly to put her cap and
coat on and push her out of the door. Don't be too long going to see
her either. If you are she'll think it's because you don't like the
sight of Dick, and she'll crawl into her shell again. Dick's a great,
big, harmless baby, but that silly grin and chuckle of his do get on
some people's nerves. Thank goodness, I've no nerves myself. I like
Dick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in his right
senses--though the Lord knows that isn't saying much. I was down there
one day in housecleaning time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying
doughnuts. Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at
once he picked up a scalding hot one I'd just fished out and dropped it
on the back of my neck when I was bending over. Then he laughed and
laughed. Believe ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart to
keep me from just whisking up that stew-