few feet beyond me, standing in mid-air over the moat and gazing
up at the high towers like one revisiting old scenes. Again he floated
toward me and poised on the wall four feet from where I stood.

"What do you here to-night?" suddenly spoke, or seemed to speak, a voice
that was like the echo of a silence.

No answer came from my frozen tongue. Yet I would gladly have spoken,
because somehow I felt a great sympathy for this boyish spirit.

"It has been many earth-years," he said, "since I have walked these
towers. And ah, cousin, it has been many miles that I have been called
to-night to answer the summons of my race. And this fortress--what power
has moved it overseas to this mad kingdom? Magic!"

His eyes seemed suddenly to blaze through the shadows.

"Cousin," he again spoke, "it is to you that I come from my far-off
English tomb. It was your need called me. It is no pious deed brings you
to this wall to-night. You are planning to pillage these towers
unworthily, even as I did yesterday. Death was my portion, and broken
hearts to the father I wronged and the girl I sought."

"But it is the father wrongs the girl here," I heard myself saying.

"He who rules these towers to-day is of stern mind but loving heart,"
said the ghost. "Patience. By the Star that redeems the world, love
should not be won _to-night_ by stealth, but by--love."

He raised his hands toward the tower, his countenance radiant with an
undying passion.

"_She_ called to me and died," he said, "and her little ghost comes not
to earth again for any winter moon or any summer wind."

"But you--you come often?" my voice was saying.

"No," said the ghost, "only on Christmas Eve. Yule is the tide of
specters; for then the thoughts of the world are so beautiful that they
enter our dreams and call us back."

He turned to go, and a boyish, friendly smile rested a moment on his
pale face.

"Farewell, Sir Geoffray de Pierrepont," he called to me.

Into the misty moonlight the ghost floated to that portion of the wall
directly opposite the haunted room. From where I stood I could not see
this chamber. After a moment I shook my numb senses to life. My first
instinct was one of strong human curiosity, which impelled me to follow
far enough to see the effect of the apparition on old Hobson, who must
be watching at the window.

I tiptoed a hundred feet along the wall and peered around a turret up to
a room above, where Hobson's head could easily be