beneath his eyes.

"What's the matter, Radnor?" Polly cried. "You look as if you'd found
the ha'nt!"

He made an effort at composure and laughed in return, though to my ears
the laugh sounded very hollow.

"I believe this is my dance, isn't it, Polly?" he asked, joining us with
rather an over-acted air of carelessness.

"Your dance was over half an hour ago," Polly returned. "This is Mr.
Mattison's."

She turned indoors with the young man, and Rad following on their
heels, made his way to the punch bowl where I saw him toss off three or
four glasses with no visible interval between them. I, decidedly
puzzled, watched him for the rest of the evening. He appeared to have
some disturbing matter on his mind, and his gaiety was clearly forced.

It was well on toward morning when the party broke up, and after some
slight conversation of a desultory sort the Colonel, Rad and I went up
to our rooms. Whether it was the excitement of the evening or the coffee
I had drunk, in any case I was not sleepy. I turned in, only to lie for
an hour or more with my eyes wide open staring at a patch of moonlight
on the ceiling. My old trouble of insomnia had overtaken me again. I
finally rose and paced the floor in sheer desperation, and then paused
to stare out of the window at the peaceful moonlit picture before me.

Suddenly I heard, as on the night of my arrival, the soft creaking of
the French window in the library, which opened on to the veranda just
below me. Quickly alert, I leaned forward determined to learn if
possible the reason for Mose's midnight wanderings. To my astonishment
it was Radnor who stepped out from the shadow of the house, carrying a
large black bundle in his arms. I clutched the frame of the window and
stared after him in dumb amazement, as he crossed the strip of moonlit
lawn and plunged into the shadows of the laurel growth.

CHAPTER V

CAT-EYE MOSE CREATES A SENSATION

For the next week or so things went rather strangely on the plantation.
I knew very well that there was an undercurrent of which I was supposed
to know nothing, and I appeared politely unconscious; but I won't say
but that I kept my eyes and ears as wide open as was possible without
appearing to spy. The chicken episode and Aunt Sukie's convulsions
turned out to be only the beginning of the ha'nt excitement; scarcely a
day passed without some fresh supernatural visitation. Radnor
pooh-poohed over the matter before the Colonel an