e
ruching at her neck.

"You--you have decided to have the second telephone put in, then?"

I hesitated. She so obviously did not want it installed. And was I to
submit meekly to the fear again, without another effort to vanquish it?

"I think not, dear Miss Emily," I said at last, smiling at her drawn
face. "Why should I disturb your lovely old house and its established
order?"

"But I want you to do just what you think best," she protested. She had
put her hands together. It was almost a supplication.

As to the strange night calls, there was little to be learned. The
night operator was in bed. The manager made a note of my complaint, and
promised an investigation, which, having had experience with telephone
investigations, I felt would lead nowhere. I left the building, with my
grocery list in my hand.

The hack was gone, of course. But--I may have imagined it--I thought
I saw Miss Emily peering at me from behind the bonnets and hats in the
milliner's window.

I did not investigate. The thing was enough on my nerves as it was.

Maggie served me my luncheon in a sort of strained silence. She observed
once, as she brought me my tea, that she was giving me notice and
intended leaving on the afternoon train. She had, she stated, holding
out the sugar-bowl to me at arm's length, stood a great deal in the way
of irregular hours from me, seeing as I would read myself to sleep, and
let the light burn all night, although very fussy about the gas-bills.
But she had reached the end of her tether, and you could grate a lemon
on her most anywhere, she was that covered with goose-flesh.

"Goose-flesh about what?" I demanded. "And either throw the sugar to me
or come closer."

"I don't know about what," she said sullenly. "I'm just scared."

And for once Maggie and I were in complete harmony. I, too, was "just
scared."

We were, however, both of us much nearer a solution of our troubles
than we had any idea of. I say solution, although it but substituted one
mystery for another. It gave tangibility to the intangible, indeed,
but I can not see that our situation was any better. I, for one, found
myself in the position of having a problem to solve, and no formula to
solve it with.

The afternoon was quiet. Maggie and the cook were in the throes of
jelly-making, and I had picked up a narrative history of the county,
written most pedantically, although with here and there a touch of heavy
lightness, by Miss Emily's fat