n for the various ghostly manifestations.
That they were the work of some one endeavoring to depreciate the value
of the property, she was certain.

"That man may have hired some girl who looks like me to help him," she
thought, "and she may have become afraid, or worried, and left. Then I
have to blunder in here, and in the dark he takes her for me. I'm sure
that's it."

Then came a change of mood.

"But what is the use of speculating and guessing about it?" Mollie
mused. "I had much better see if there is a way out. Oh, joy! A
window--two of them!"

She approached the casements, realizing that as she was on the ground
floor the sills could not be very high from earth. But though she saw
that the catches on the frames were broken, and though she managed to
raise one sash, it was with a jolt of disappointment that she saw the
windows were heavily barred.

"A regular prison!" gasped Mollie. "This must have been a most peculiar
house--barred windows. No wonder people shun it. Ugh! It gives me the
creeps."

She flashed her lamp on the wooden sill, into which the iron rods were
screwed. Then a wave of hope came into her heart. She saw rotting wood
and rusting iron. She pushed on one bar. It gave slightly.

"I can force them out, I'm sure!" she exclaimed aloud. "Oh, for
something to use!"

Her light shone around the room--on a pile of broken chairs. She ran and
grasped the leg of one. It was heavy and solid.

Mollie placed it between two of the bars, and pried. She was strong, and
it did not take all of her muscle to force the ends of the rods from the
rotting wood of the sill. A child might have done it. In a moment she
had a space sufficiently wide to enable her to get out.

And then she heard a sound out in the road. It was a carriage being
driven rapidly.

"Perhaps that man went for some vehicle in which to take me away!"
thought the girl, aghast. "I had better not go out! What shall I do? My
light! I must put it out, or he'll see me," and she turned the flame of
the lantern down, leaving herself in darkness.

CHAPTER XIX

MYSTIFIED

"What can I do for you? What seems to be the trouble?" inquired the man
whom Betty and the others had hailed as they rushed to the door of the
strange house, and peered out into the darkness.

"We're in a haunted mansion, and the ghost has taken Mollie away!" cried
Grace, hysterically. "Please make him give her up. Oh, please do!"

But Betty paid no heed to her