e was so slight it could hardly be called a sound.
Yet even this slight movement did not belong to the night and the silence
of the sleeping household.

The sound was repeated. Then a stillness followed, more absolute
than before.

"Is it a burglar, Bab?" Ruth breathed.

Barbara's hand pressure meant they must listen and wait. "It may be
possible," Bab thought, "that a dog or cat has somehow gotten into the
house downstairs."

At this, the girls left the sofa and, going over to the banister, peered
cautiously down into the darkness.

This time the two girls saw a light that shone like a flame in the
darkness below. Quietly there floated into their line of vision something
white, ethereal--perchance a spirit from another world. It vanished and
the blackness was again unbroken. The figure had seemed strangely tall.
It appeared to swim along, rather than to walk, draperies as fine as mist
hanging about it.

"What on earth was that, Barbara?" Ruth queried, more curious than
frightened by the apparition. "If I believed in spirits I might think we
had just seen the ghost of Harriet's mother. Harriet's old black Mammy
has always said that Aunt Hattie comes back at night to guard Harriet, if
she is in any special trouble or danger."

"I suppose we had better go downstairs and find out what we have seen,"
whispered more matter-of-fact Bab. "Mr. Hamlin is not here. I don't think
there is any sense in our arousing the family until we know something
more. I should not like to frighten Mrs. Wilson and Harriet for nothing."

The two girls slipped downstairs without making a sound. Everything on
the lower floor seemed dark and quiet. Ruth and Bab both began to think
they had been haunted by a dream. They were on their way upstairs again,
when Ruth suddenly turned and glanced behind her.

"Bab," she whispered, clutching at Barbara's bathrobe until that young
woman nearly tumbled backwards down the steps, "there is a light in
Uncle's study! I suppose it is Harriet who is down there."

It flashed across Bab's mind to wonder, oddly, if Harriet's visit to her
father's study at night could have anything to do with her debt to her
dressmaker of five hundred dollars! For Mollie had reported to her sister
that Harriet was feeling desperate over her unpleasant situation.

"If it is Harriet downstairs I don't think we ought to go down," Bab
objected. "We would frighten her if we walked in on her so unexpectedly."

"Harriet ought no