you want a key to your door?" he asked, with a slight
appearance of excitement. "We don't lock doors here in the village; at
least we didn't."

"I did not say it was my door," I began, but, feeling that this was a
prevarication not only unworthy of me, but one that he was entirely too
sharp to accept, I added stiffly: "It is for my door. I am not
accustomed even at home to sleep with my room unlocked."

"Oh," he murmured, totally unconvinced, "I thought you might have got a
scare. Folks somehow are afraid of that old place, it's so big and
ghost-like. I don't think you would find any one in this village who
would sleep there all night."

"A pleasing preparation for my rest to-night," I grimly laughed.
"Dangers on the road and ghosts in the house. Happily I don't believe in
the latter."

The gesture he made showed incredulity. He had ceased rapping with the
key or even to show any wish to join his assistant. All his thoughts for
the moment seemed to be concentrated on me.

"You don't know little Rob," he inquired, "the crippled lad who lives at
the head of the lane?"

"No," I said; "I haven't been in town a day yet, but I mean to know Rob
and his sister too. Two cripples in one family rouse my interest."

He did not say why he had spoken of the child, but began tapping with
his key again.

"And you are sure you saw nothing?" he whispered. "Lots of things can
happen in a lonely road like that."

"Not if everybody is as afraid to enter it as you say your villagers
are," I retorted.

But he didn't yield a jot.

"Some folks don't mind present dangers," said he. "Spirits----"

But he received no encouragement in his return to this topic. "You don't
believe in spirits?" said he. "Well, they are doubtful sort of folks,
but when honest and respectable people such as live in this town, when
children even, see what answers to nothing but phantoms, then I remember
what a wiser man than any of us once said----But perhaps you don't read
Shakespeare, madam?"

Nonplussed for the moment, but interested in the man's talk more than
was consistent with my need of haste, I said with some spirit, for it
struck me as very ridiculous that this country mechanic should question
my knowledge of the greatest dramatist of all time, "Shakespeare and the
Bible form the staple of my reading." At which he gave me a little nod
of apology and hastened to say:

"Then you know what I mean--Hamlet's remark to Horatio, madam, 'There
are m