readily.

CHAPTER IX

_In Which We See Ghosts_

The next morning Rob tried earnestly and vainly to drive a wedge in
Beth's good graces, but she treated him with a casual tolerance that
finally put him in an ill humor which he took out on me with many a
gibe at my "stone fence spirit."

Men of my profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are
not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm
and the beckoning finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. It
might have been a curtain blowing out the window or a fake of some
kind. But I knew that unless there was some kind of a showing in a
ghostly way that night, I should never hear the last of my stone fence
indulgence, so I resolved to make a preliminary visit alone by
daylight and rig up something white to substantiate my spectral
narrative.

I didn't find an opportunity to escape unseen until late in the
afternoon, when I went, ostensibly, for a solitary row on the lake.

I landed and came by a circuitous route to the haunted house. The calm
security of sunshine, of course, prevented any shivers of anticipation
such as I had experienced the night before. On passing one of the
windows on my way to the front entrance, I glanced in, stopped in
sheer fright, stooped and backed to the next window, which was
screened by a labyrinth of vines through which I peered. I am sure I
lost my Bloom of Youth complexion for a few moments. I babbled
aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull together and beat it to
the lake with as much speed as my farmer friend had shown in his
retreat. I made the boat and the hotel in double quick time.

[Illustration: I babbled aimlessly to myself and then managed to pull
together and beat it to the lake]

I felt no misgivings now as to the promise of a sensation that night,
and that sustaining thought was all that propped my flagging spirits
throughout the day, but I resolved to keep my little party at safe
distance from the house.

"Say we keep our nocturnal noctambulation under our hats," proposed
Rob.

When this proposition was translated to Silvia, she entirely approved,
so, committing Diogenes to the Polydores' Providence, we left the
hotel at half past eleven for a row on the lake by moonlight.

When we descended the slope leading to the House of Mystery, I
cautioned silence and a "safety-first" distance.

"Ghosts are easily vanished," I informed them. "They don't seek
limelight, and