l accident to my husband.

I closed the little volume with very strange thoughts. If Mayor Packard
had believed himself to have received an explanation of his wife's
strange condition in the confession she had made of having seen an
apparition such as this in her library, or if I had believed myself to
have touched the bottom of the mystery absorbing this unhappy household
in my futile discoveries of the human and practical character of the
visitants who had haunted this house, then Mayor Packard and I had made
a grave mistake.

CHAPTER XVI. IN THE LIBRARY

I was still in Mrs. Packard's room, brooding over the enigma offered by
the similarity between the account I had just read and the explanation
she had given of the mysterious event which had thrown such a cloud over
her life, when, moved by some unaccountable influence, I glanced up
and saw Nixon standing in the open doorway, gazing at me with an uneasy
curiosity I was sorry enough to have inspired.

"Mrs. Packard wants you," he declared with short ceremony. "She's in
the library." And, turning on his heel, he took his deliberate way
down-stairs.

I followed hard after him, and, being brisk in my movements, was at his
back before he was half-way to the bottom. He seemed to resent this,
for he turned a baleful look back at me and purposely delayed his steps
without giving me the right of way.

"Is Mrs. Packard in a hurry?" I asked. "If so, you had better let me
pass."

He gave no appearance of having heard me; his attention had been caught
by something going on at the rear of the hall we were now approaching.
Following his anxious glance, I saw the door of the mayor's study open
and Mrs. Packard come out. As we reached the lower step, she passed us
on her way to the library. Wondering what errand had taken her to the
study, which she was supposed not to visit, I turned to join her and
caught a glimpse of the old man's face. It was more puckered, scowling
and malignant of aspect than usual. I was surprised that Mrs. Packard
had not noticed it. Surely it was not the countenance of a mere
disgruntled servant. Something not to be seen on the surface was
disturbing this old man; and, moving in the shadows as I was, I
questioned whether it would not conduce to some explanation between
Mrs. Packard and myself if I addressed her on the subject of this old
serving-man's peculiar ways.

But the opportunity for doing this did not come that morning. On
enteri