ll gathered in the long drawing room opening on
the colonnade, and, when the hour sounded, some one was singing. The
host and hostess heard the running horses, as usual, and they were
conscious that one or two people turned a listening ear, but evidently
no one saw anything strange in it, and no comment was made. It was
after one when they all went up to their rooms, so that evening passed
off all right.

But on Sunday night two of the younger guests had gone to sit on the
front terrace, and the older people were walking, in the moonlight, in
the garden at the back. The sweet little girl, who was having her hand
held, got up properly when she heard the carriage coming, and went to
the edge of the terrace to see who was arriving at midnight. She had a
fit of nerves as the invisible vehicle and its running horses seemed
about to ride over her. She ran in, trembling with fear, to tell the
tale, and of course every one laughed at her, and the matter would
have been dropped, if it had not happened that, just at that moment a
very pale gentleman came stumbling out of the house with the statement
that he wanted a conveyance "to take him back to town," that "he
refused to sleep in a haunted house," that he "had encountered an
invisible person running along the corridor to his room," in fact the
footsteps had as he put it "passed right through him."

The host broke into laughter, but he took the bull by the horns--the
facts, as he knew them, were safer than the tales which he knew would
run over the city if he attempted to deny things.

"See here, my good people," he said, "there is a little mystery here
that we can't explain. The truth is, there _is_ a story about this
house. It used to belong to the president of a well-known railroad.
That was twenty-five years ago. They say that one night, when he was
driving from a place he had up country, his team was run into at a
railway crossing five miles from here--one of those grade crossings
that never ought to have been--and he was killed and his horses came
home at midnight. 'They say' that the people who lived here after that
declared that the horses have come home every midnight since. Now,
there's the story. They don't do any harm. It only takes them a few
minutes. They don't even trample the driveway, so why not?"

"All the same, I want to go back to town," said the frightened guest.

"I would stay the night, if I were you," said the host. "They won't
come again until to-m