ve no patience with
people who imagine ghosts!"

Maisie's own nerves were of the stoutest. She certainly could not
sympathize with superstitious fears, and neither flickering lights nor
possible spectres would have distressed her in the least.

"When people shriek at nothing and rouse the whole house, they deserve
to have something to shriek at," remarked Flossie.

But Maisie was in the act of hopping into bed, and only grunted in
reply, while Pauline and Lettice were already half-asleep. Flossie lay
for a minute or two pondering over the affair, then got up again very
softly. First, she felt on her washstand for her tooth powder, and
dabbed her face plentifully with it till she was sure it must be white
all over; then she took the towel, and arranged it over her head, to
hide her hair. In every bedroom at St. Chad's there were a candle and a
box of matches, in case the electric light should suddenly fail;
Flossie groped for these and found them, and, taking them in her hand,
left the room on tiptoe.

"Where are you going?" asked Maisie drowsily, but receiving no reply,
she did not even trouble to open her eyes.

Once outside the door, Flossie lighted her candle. She was determined,
in spite of Vivian's warning, to play a trick upon Evelyn.

"She needs teasing out of such rubbish," she said to herself. "Vivian
Holmes always makes an absurd fuss of her--quite spoils her, in fact. I
think the best way to cure people is to laugh at them."

Creeping softly downstairs, she switched off the electric light at the
end of the lower landing, and, shading her candle with her hand, passed
along in the darkness to No. 4. Without pausing a moment she entered,
holding up one arm in a dramatic attitude, and making her eyes glare
wildly from her whitened face. The effect was beyond all that she had
anticipated. Such a scream of agonized fear came from the bed in the
corner that, alarmed at what she had done, Flossie turned and fled. As
she ran through the door she realized that somebody was hastening along
the dark passage, and, afraid of being discovered, she turned suddenly
and rushed up the short flight of steps that led to Honor's bedroom,
blowing out her candle as she went. She crouched for a few moments
outside the door of No. 8, then, hearing no footsteps pursuing her, she
ventured to steal down again and make a dash for the stairs and the
upper landing, where she whisked into No. 13 with all possible speed.

"It was a n