ia. "I'm worn to a bone already."

When she returned to her post after a brief nap on the wide couch,
everything was quiet, much to her disgust.

"Why in the world doesn't Elinor loosen up?" she thought, impatiently.

As she moved nearer she gave a start of surprise. The lights in the
night-life room were out. The transom showed black and empty above the
massive folded doors.

Patricia drew in her breath with a gasp. She put her hand on the knob
of the door and noiselessly turned it.

"I'll slip in behind the door screen," she thought, "and see what's
going on. Elinor may need me."

CHAPTER V

THE GHOST DANCE

The room was very dark at first, and little whispers ran all about in
the gloom. There was a rustling and shuffling and a sound of hurried,
muffled steps. Patricia, from her hiding place behind the door screen,
could make out nothing but the dim oblong of the transom above her head
and the long pale mass of the skylight.

Suddenly a match flared and the twinkling tip of light grew at a candle
end and she saw a ghostly figure, its white hand busy with the candle
wick and its hollow, black eyes fixed on the tiny growing flame.
Instantly other matches flickered and more candles glimmered in ghostly
fingers, until the room was flashing with tiny points of light, while
the masses of heavy shadow trembled and surged about an array of
white-clad, mysterious, skull-faced figures that slowly formed in line
and, two by two, moved to the center of the room, chanting a low,
monotonous song as they walked in solemn procession.

"My word!" breathed Patricia, stirred and chilled in spite of herself.
"They're doing it brown this time!"

As her eyes grew accustomed to the flicker and motion, she searched for
Elinor, and saw her at last, the center of the weird procession,
standing quietly beside the chair from which she had risen, holding her
head with a sweet and gracious dignity that went straight to Patricia's
chilled heart.

"Dear old Norn," she thought with a returning glow. "They can't scare
her, bless her heart!"

Elinor stood smiling a little at the gruesome company as they slowly
paced about her in a narrowing circle, and when the leader took her
hand and led her to the model stand, motioning to her to mount it, she
acquiesced with graceful alacrity.

Standing high above them in the semi-gloom, with that faint smile still
on her lips, she watched them calmly as they danced the famous Ghost