o Miss Kippy as
a brilliant suggestion. She assisted in unbuttoning the single straps
and watched with glee as they were fastened about her wrists.

[Illustration: "'Don't leave me'"]

"Now," said Mr. Opp, with assumed enthusiasm, "we'll make the slippers
walk you up-stairs, and after Aunt Tish undresses you, they shall walk
you to bed. Won't that be fun?"

Miss Kippy's fancy was so tickled by this suggestion that she put it
into practice at once, and went gaily forth up the steps on all fours.
At the turn she stopped, and looked at him wistfully:

"You'll come up before I go to sleep?" she begged; "Daddy did."

Half an hour later Aunt Tish came down the narrow stairway: "She done
gone to baid now, laughin' an' happy ag'in," she said; "she never did
have dem spells when her paw was round, an' sometimes dat chile jes as
clear in her mind as you an' me is."

"What is it she's afraid of?" asked Mr. Opp.

Aunt Tish leaned toward him across the table, and the light of the lamp
fell full upon her black, bead-like eyes, and her sunken jaws, and on
the great palpitating scar.

"De ghosties," she whispered; "dey been worriting dat chile ever' chance
dey git. _I_ hear 'em! Dey wait till I take a nap of sleep, den dey
comes sneakin' in to pester her. She says dey ain't but one, but I hears
heaps ob 'em, some ob 'em so little dey kin climb onder de crack in de
door."

"Look a-here, Aunt Tish," said Mr. Opp, sternly, "don't you ever talk a
word of this foolishness to her again. Not one word, do you hear?"

"Yas, sir; dat's what Mr. Moore allays said, an' I _don't_ talk to her
'bout hit, I don't haf to. She done knows I know. I been livin' heah
goin' on forty years, sence 'fore you was borned, an' you can't fool me,
chile; no, sir, dat you can't."

"Well, you must go to bed now," said Mr. Opp, looking up at the clock
and seeing that it was half-past something though he did not know what.

"I never goes to baid when I stays here," announced Aunt Tish; "I sets
up in de kitchen an' sleeps. I's skeered dat chile run away; she 'low
she gwine to some day. Her paw ketched her oncet gittin' in a boat down
on de river-bank. She ain't gwine, while I's here, no sir-ee! I never
leaves her in de daytime an' her paw never leaves her at night, dat is,
when he's livin'."

After she had gone, Mr. Opp ascended the stairway, and entered the room
above. A candle sputtered on the table, and in its light he saw the
wide, four-poster bed th