Washburn was
employed. The newspaper advertisement was inserted, and at last had its
effect.

The facts in the case were presented to the court after the faker's
arrest, and the judge lost no time in deposing him as Carrie's guardian.
He was obliged to give up the money he had wrongfully retained, and
Allen Washburn was, much to Carrie's delight, appointed to look after
her affairs.

"You'll be all right now, my dear," said Mollie, when the court action
was over.

"She will be, if Betty doesn't get jealous!" said Grace, with a laugh.
"Oh, I didn't mean anything!" she added quickly, as she saw her chum
frown. "Have a chocolate!"

Bennington, or Clark--the faker, to be brief--was thus held by the law.
In view of the other charges against him, Mollie did not press hers.

"It would only bring you into unpleasant notoriety," said Mr. Washburn.
"He will get a severe enough penalty as it is."

"He must have mistaken you for me," said Carrie, as they talked over the
thrusting of Mollie into the room. "Seeing you in the house whence I had
fled, and with your hair hanging down, he made a natural mistake,
thinking I had come back to him."

"Except that my hair is nothing like as lovely as yours, my dear."

"Oh, yours is fine, I think. But the dim light might have deceived him."

"But why should he dress up all in white--like a ghost?" asked Grace.

"Probably to play that part," suggested Betty. "That is one point we
haven't solved--how the ghostly manifestations were brought about. I
wish we could have solved that for the sake of Mr. Lagg."

"I fancy it is solved," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. "It was the
faker, all the while."

"It was?" cried Mollie. "Did he do it on purpose?"

"No, he had no intention of being a spook, but he could not have done it
better had he planned it. I have been talking to him," and Mr. Blackford
nodded in the direction of the court house. "He made a clean breast of
everything when Allen hinted that it might have a good effect when he
came to be sentenced.

"It seems that he manufactured his hair-tonic in the haunted mansion. It
was necessary to heat it in a sort of furnace, and this made the
groaning sound you heard, it was caused by air pressure. Sometimes it
groaned and again it shrieked as the hot air rushed from the
ventilator."

"And the clank of the metal?" asked Grace, not without a look over her
shoulder, though it was broad daylight.

"That was when he stirred the stuf