force it upward.

"Yes, it woke me. I can see the parade if I can get this window open.
It----"

"Why, you're half asleep!" exclaimed Frederik. "The circus left town ten
days ago!"

"No, no!" insisted Willem, raising the window with one final wrench of
his frail arms. "The band's playing _now_. Hear it?"

A gust of chilly, wet air dashed in through the open window, sending a
sharp draught across the room and waking the boy wide as it beat into
his hot face.

"Why," babbled Willem, rubbing his eyes, and staring about him, "why,
it's _night_ time! I wonder what made me think the circus was here. I--I
guess it was a dream."

Frederik strode to the window impatiently and slammed it shut. As he
passed Willem on the way back to the desk the boy intuitively cowered
away from him.

"You've had a fever," said Frederik crossly, "and you're liable to catch
cold, wandering around this draughty old barn in your night clothes. Go
back to bed."

"Yes, sir," whimpered the boy, cringing under the sharp tone and
starting back for the stairs. But, before he reached the lowest step, he
halted. Peter Grimm stood barring his way. For a moment the Dead Man and
the child stood face to face. Then, still frightened but unable to
resist, Willem turned back toward Frederik, who had just picked up the
photograph once more; to put it in the smouldering ashes.

"Mynheer Frederik," asked the boy in a voice not his own, "where is Anne
Marie?"

"What?" barked Frederik with an uncontrollable start and whipping the
photograph around behind his back like a guilty child caught in theft.
"What's that? Anne Marie? Why do you ask _me_ about her? How should _I_
know?"

He turned his back on the boy and began to tear the photograph into tiny
bits. Willem hesitated, then went back to the stairway. Again at the
foot of the steps he confronted the Dead Man. Again they stood for an
instant, looking wordlessly into each other's eyes. And again Willem
turned back into the room.

"Mynheer Frederik," he asked in a sort of dazed bewilderment, "_where_
is Mynheer Grimm?"

"Eh? Mynheer Grimm? Dead, of course. Dead."

"Are--are you _sure_? Because just now----"

"Oh, go to bed! At once, do you hear! Go, or I'll have you punished!"

Under this dire threat and the scowl that went with it, not even the
Dead Man's power could stem Willem's defeat. Up the stairs he scuttled.
At the door of his room, the fever thirst in his hot, parched throat for
the momen