. "Oh, Liz! you mustn't! You
promised to stay! We're paying you good wages, Liz! Don't leave us to
do all the work!" was the chorus of objections.

"Well! I ain't goin' to stay right here where that ha'nt can get me,"
declared Liz.

"But," put forth Laura, seriously, though her eyes twinkled, "you
shouldn't be afraid of _that_ haunt if he was such a nice young man as
you say he was."

"Huh!" grumbled Lizzie Bean, practically. "No young man is nice after
he's dead."

There seemed to be no answer to this statement. But Mrs. Morse came to
the rescue.

"You can bring your cot into the cabin, Lizzie," she said. "You will
not be afraid if you sleep there with me, will you?"

"No, Ma'am. I reckon not," admitted the girl.

"But how about _us_?" cried Lil Pendleton. "Surely, we won't stay here
if there are men on the island?"

"It's big enough for them and us, too, I guess," said Bobby,
doubtfully.

"Maybe the man--or men--who stole our food, is no longer on the
island," Laura said, slowly.

"And they paid for it!" exclaimed Dora.

"Money isn't everything," said Nellie.

"What _is_?" demanded Bobby.

"Our peace of mind," declared the doctor's daughter, "is more
important. I shall be afraid to stay here if there are strange men on
the island."

"We'll settle that," Laura declared, with vigor, "and at once."

"How?" demanded Dorothy, wonderingly.

"Search the island," said practical Mother Wit. "Certainly not by
sitting down and sucking our thumbs."

"Oh, Laura!" wailed Lil. "I wouldn't dare!"

"Wouldn't dare what?" was Laura's rejoinder.

"Hunt for those men on this island. Why! we don't _want_ to find
them."

"And I'd like to know why not? I don't care if they _did_ leave money
for the food they took----"

"But there must be something bad about them----"

"How do we know that, Lil?" asked Laura. "There is, rather, something
_good_ about them, or they would not have left the money for the
stolen food."

"Dear Laura is right--as she almost always is," said Mrs. Morse,
fondly. "A real thief at heart would not have left that ten dollar
bill."

"An' I'm tellin' you that chap was the nicest one that lived at Missis
Brayton's boardin' house," put in Liz, reflectively.

"What chap?" cried Jess.

"The ha'nt," said Liz, simply.

"Oh, dear me, Lizzie!" said Laura, in some disgust. "Don't keep that
up."

"Well, then! If it wasn't his ha'nt, it was _himself_. Guess I know
him," declared the girl-of-a