kfast
and lunch for them, but she won't stay after dark."

Garth grinned, recalling the inspector's comment about spooks.

"Why did the servants quit?"

The driver glanced over his shoulder again. He hurried his horse.

"Laughing's cheap," he said, "but you can judge for yourself how lonely
it is, and Mr. Alden's right on the ocean--only house for two miles. You
see he owns a big piece of this coast--woods right down to the water.
They've always told about a lot of soldiers being killed in those woods
during the Revolution. All my life I've heard talk about seeing things
there. Servants got talking a few days ago--said they saw shadows in
grave clothes going through the woods. I laughed at that, too. But I
didn't laugh when they found Mr. Alden's valet yesterday morning, dead
as a door nail."

Garth whistled.

"Violence?"

"Not a sign. Coroner says apoplexy, but that doesn't convince anybody
that doesn't want to be."

"Curious," Garth mused.

For some time a confused murmuring had increased in his ears--the
persistent fury of water turned back by a rocky coast.

They turned through a gateway, and, across a broad lawn, he caught a
glimpse of lights, dim, unreal, as one might picture will-o-the-wisps.
But the night and the mist could not hide from Garth the size of the
house, significant of wealth and a habit of comfort. That such an
establishment should be practically bereft of service was sufficient
proof that there was, indeed, something here to combat. Yet from the
driver he could draw nothing more ponderable than the fancied return of
the dead to their battlefield, and a distrust, natural enough in a
native, of the horde of new men gathered for the furnaces.

When he had stepped from the carriage he saw that the lights were
confined to the lower hall and one room to the left. The rest of the
great house stretched away with an air of decay and abandonment.

In response to his ring he heard a step drag across the floor, but the
door was not opened at once. Instead a quavering voice demanded his
identity.

With some impatience Garth grasped the knob, and as he heard the
carriage retreat towards the town, called out:

"My name is Garth. I'm expected."

The door was swung back almost eagerly, and Garth stepped across the
threshold of the lonely house.

An old man faced him, white-haired, bent at the shoulders, unkempt and
so out of key with the neat hard-wood floor, the hangings, and the
wainscot of