to."

She had clenched her brown fists in her excitement and Peter laughed.

"I think I'd be a little sorry for anybody who tried to make you do
anything you didn't want to do," he said.

She frowned. "Why, if I thought that bandy-legged, lantern-jawed, old
buzzard was comin' around here frightenin' Aunt Tillie, I'd--I'd----"

"What would you do?"

"Never you mind what I'd do. But I'm not afraid of Jack Bray," she
finished confidently.

The terrors that had been built up around the house of McGuire, the
mystery surrounding the awe-inspiring prowler, the night vigils, the
secrecy--all seemed to fade into a piece of hobbledehoy buffoonery at
Beth's contemptuous description of her recreant relative. And he smiled
at her amusedly.

"But what would you say," he asked seriously, "if I told you that last
night Mr. McGuire saw the same person your Aunt Tillie did, and that he
was terrified--almost to the verge of collapse?"

Beth had risen, her eyes wide with incredulity.

"Merciful Father! McGuire! Did he have another spell last night? You
don't mean----?"

"I went up to his room. He was done for. He had seen outside the
drawing-room window the face of the very man he's been guarding himself
against."

"I can't believe----," she gasped. "And you think Aunt Tillie----?"

"Your Aunt Tillie talked to a man outside the door of the kitchen. You
didn't hear her. I did. The same man who had been frightening Mr.
McGuire."

"Aunt Tillie!" she said in astonishment.

"There's not a doubt of it. McGuire saw him. Andy saw him too,--thought
he was the chauffeur."

Beth's excitement was growing with the moments.

"Why, Aunt Tillie didn't know anything about what was frightening Mr.
McGuire--no more'n I did," she gasped.

"She knows now. She wasn't sick last night, Beth. She was just
bewildered--frightened half out of her wits. I spoke to her after you
went home. She wouldn't say a word. She was trying to conceal something.
But there was a man outside and she knows who he is."

"But what could Jack Bray have to do with Mr. McGuire?" she asked in
bewilderment.

Peter shrugged. "You know as much as I do. I wouldn't have told you this
if you'd been afraid. But Mrs. Bergen is."

"Well, did you _ever?_"

"No, I never did," replied Peter, smiling.

"It does beat _anything_."

"It does. It's most interesting, but as far as I can see, hardly
alarming for you, whatever it may be to Mr. McGuire or Mrs. Bergen. If
the ma