rk terror, almost.

"Don't you go up to the Carmody place, young feller. They's queer
doin's in the big house, is why. Blue lights at night, an' noises
inside--an'--an' cracklin' like thunder overhead--"

"Aw shet up, Gramp!" Another of the idlers, a youngster with chubby
features, and downy of lip and chin, sauntered over from the group,
interrupting the old man's discourse. "Don't listen to him," he said
to Bert. "He's cracked a mite--been seein' things. The big house is up
yonder on the hill. See, with the red chimbley showin' through the
trees. They's a windin' road down here a piece."

Bert followed the pointing finger with suddenly anxious gaze. It was
not an inviting spot, that tangle of second-growth timber and
underbrush that hid the big house on the lonely hillside; it might
conceal almost anything. And Joan Parker was there!

The one called Gramp was screeching invectives at the grinning
bystanders. "You passel o' young idjits!" he stormed. "I seen it, I
tell you. An'--an' heard things, too, The devil hisself is up
there--an' his imps. We'd oughtn't to let this feller go...."

[Illustration: _He attacked it in vain with his fists._]

Bert waited to hear no more. Unreasoning fear came to him that
something was very much amiss up there at the big house, and he
started the flivver with a thunderous barrage of its exhaust.

The words of Joan's note were vivid in his mind: "Come to me, Bert, at
the Carmody place in Lenville. Believe me, I need you." Only that, but
it had been sufficient to bring young Redmond across three states to
this measly town that wasn't even on the road maps.

Bert yanked the bouncing car into the winding road that led up the
hill, and thought grimly of the quarrel with Joan two years before. He
had told her then, arrogantly, that she'd need him some day. But now
that his words had proved true the fact brought him no consolation
nor the slightest elation. Joan was there in this lonely spot, and she
did need him. That was enough.

He ran nervous fingers through his already tousled mop of sandy
hair--a habit he had when disturbed--and nearly wrecked the car on a
gray boulder that encroached on one of the two ruts which, together,
had been termed a road.

Stupid, that quarrel of theirs. And how stubborn both had been! Joan
had insisted on going to the big city to follow the career her
brother had chosen for her. Chemistry, biology, laboratory work! Bert
sniffed, even now. But he ha