ogie in the dark!"
This was said in the faint hope that HE had seen something too. If it
had been Larry or her father who had met her, she would have confessed
everything.

"You had better go in," he said curtly. "I will see you safe inside the
house."

She demurred at this, but as she could not persist in her first bold
intention of examining the locality of the vision without admitting its
existence, she permitted him to walk with her to the house, and then at
once fled to her own room. Larry and her father noticed their entrance
together and their agitated manner, and were uneasy. Yet the colonel's
paternal pride and Larry's lover's respect kept the two men from
communicating their thoughts to each other.

"The confounded pup has been tryin' to be familiar, and Polly's set him
down," thought Larry, with glowing satisfaction.

"He's been trying some of his sanctimonious Yankee abolition talk on
Polly, and she shocked him!" thought the colonel exultingly.

But poor Polly had other things to think of in the silence of her room.
Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but
Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too
high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence.
She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and
speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't
tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed that she had
seen a ghost, no doubt the ghost of the murdered Sobriente, according
to Larry's story. WHY he should appear with only his head above ground
puzzled her, although it suggested the Catholic idea of purgatory, and
he was a Catholic! Perhaps he would have risen entirely but for that
stupid Starbuck's presence; perhaps he had a message for HER alone. The
idea pleased Polly, albeit it was a "fearful joy" and attended with some
cold shivering. Naturally, as a gentleman, he would appear to HER--the
daughter of a gentleman--the successor to his house--rather than to
a Yankee stranger. What was she to do? For once her calm nerves were
strangely thrilled; she could not think of undressing and going to
bed, and two o'clock surprised her, still meditating, and occasionally
peeping from her window upon the moonlit but vacant garden. If she saw
him again, would she dare to go down alone? Suddenly she started to
her feet with a beating heart! There was the unmistakable sound of a
stealthy footstep i