ul examination of the
room, but found nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary. And yet there
was a mystery there. She had long since decided that her own experience
in that room had been imagination, but now that conviction was shaken.
Miss Timpson must have heard something; she HAD heard something which
frightened her into leaving the boarding-house she professed to like so
well. Ghost or no ghost, Miss Timpson had gone; and one more source of
income upon which Mrs. Barnes had depended went with her. Slowly, and
with the feeling that not only this world but the next was conspiring to
bring about the failure of her enterprise and the ruin of her plans and
her hopes, Thankful descended the stairs to the kitchen and set about
preparing breakfast.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. Caleb Hammond rose that Sunday morning with a partially developed
attack of indigestion and a thoroughly developed "grouch."
The indigestion was due to an injudicious partaking of light
refreshment--sandwiches, ice cream and sarsaparilla "tonic"--at the
club the previous evening. Simeon Baker had paid for the refreshment,
ordering the supplies sent in from Mr. Chris Badger's store. Simeon had
received an unexpected high price for cranberries shipped to New York,
and was in consequence "flush" and reckless. He appeared at the club at
nine-thirty, after most of its married members had departed for their
homes and only a few of the younger set and one or two bachelors, like
Mr. Hammond, remained, and announced that he was going to "blow the
crowd." The crowd was quite willing to be blown and said so.

Mr. Hammond ate three sandwiches and two plates of ice cream, also he
smoked two cigars. He did not really feel the need of the second cream
or the second cigar, but, as they were furnished without cost to him, he
took them as a matter of principle. Hence the indigestion.

The "grouch" was due partially to the unwonted dissipation and its
consequences and partly to the fact that his winter "flannels" had not
been returned by Mrs. Melinda Pease, to whom they had been consigned for
mending and overhauling.

It was the tenth of November and for a period of twenty-four years, ever
since his recovery from a severe attack of rheumatic fever, Caleb had
made it a point to lay aside his summer underwear on the morning of
November tenth and don a heavy suit. Weather, cold or warm, was not
supposed to have any bearing on this change. The ninth might be as
frigid