t you heard it?" he exclaimed, looking at me sharply out of his
small gray eyes. "It seems, 'way back in the sixteenth century, there
was a harum-scarum young feller living in a neighboring castle, and he
took an awful shine to Lady Katherine, daughter of the Earl of Cummyngs,
who was boss of this place at that time. Now the young man who loved
Miss--I mean Lady--Katherine was a sort of wild proposition. Old man
wouldn't have him around the place; but young man kept hanging on till
Earl ordered him off. Finally the old gent locked Lady Kitty in the
donjon tower," said Mr. Hobson.

"Too much shilly-shallying in _this_ generation," he went on. "Every
house that's got a pretty girl ought to have a donjon keep. I've got
both." He paused and wiped his brow.

"This fresh young kid I'm telling you about, he thought he knew more
than the old folks, so he got a rope ladder and climbed up the masonry
one night, intending to bust into the tower where the girl was. But just
as he got half across the wall--out yonder--his foot slipped and he
broke his neck in the moat below. Consequence, Lady Kitty goes crazy and
old Earl found dead a week later in his room. It was Christmas Eve when
the boy was killed. That's the night his ghost's supposed to walk along
the ramparts, give a shriek, and drop off--but the irritating thing
about it all is, it don't ever happen."

"And now, Mr. Hobson," I said, throwing away the butt of my cigar, "why
am _I_ here? What have _I_ got to do with all this ghost business?"

"I _want_ you to stay," said Hobson, beseechingly. "To-morrow night's
Christmas Eve. I've figured it out that your influence, somehow, you
being of the same blood, as it were, might encourage the ghost to come
out and save the reputation of the castle."

A servant brought candles, and Hobson turned to retire.

"The same blood!" I shouted after him. "What on earth is the _name_ of
the ghost?"

"When he was alive his name was--Sir Geoffray de Pierrepont," said
Thaddeus Hobson, his figure fading into the dimness beyond.

I followed the servant with the candle aloft through chill and carven
corridors, through galleries lined with faded portraits of forgotten
lords. "Wheels!" I kept saying to myself. "The old man evidently thinks
it takes a live Pierrepont to coax a dead one," and I laughed nervously
as I entered the vast brown bedroom. I had to get on a chair in order to
climb into the four-poster, a cheerful affair that looked like