in sight of the well-known dock where her own tiny
craft still rested. She looked around. Not a soul seemed to be in
sight.

With a cunningness far out of the ordinary, the poor girl crept along
the shrubbery in the direction of the barn. This structure was locked
up. From the barn she turned to the house, and, watching her chance,
she entered by the cellar-way, which chanced to be standing open.

It was dark and damp below stairs, and the girl shivered as she stood
there, trying to make up her mind what to do next. Should she go right
up and try to find her father? Supposing her stepmother was there,
would she try to make more trouble?

Margaret mounted the stairs and entered the lower hall of the house.
The blinds were closed, and all was dark. She moved towards the room
where the body of her father had been found.

At that moment the woman who had been left at the mansion came from the
kitchen. She caught one glimpse of the girl and set up a shriek.

"It's a ghost!" she cried. "A ghost! Heaven help me!"

The cry was so piercing and so genuine, it roused Margaret from the
stupor in which she was moving.

"My father! He is dead, after all! Oh, daddy!" she screamed, and then
turned, brushed past the woman, and sped out of the back door of the
mansion.

"What's the matter?" came from the policeman who was on guard.

"She--a ghost!" stammered Mrs. Morse. "I saw her!"

"Her? Who?"

"Margaret Langmore! Or else her ghost!" The woman had gone white, and
was shaking from head to feet.

"Where?"

"Here."

"When?"

"Just now!"

"It can't have been the girl. She is in bed, under the doctor's care."

"But I saw her!" insisted the woman.

"We'll take a look around," answered the guardian of the law.

They commenced the search, but long before this was done Margaret had
run back to the river. She dropped into the rowboat, and rowed off as
swiftly as her failing strength would permit.

"Daddy is dead, after all!" she moaned, over and over again. "And she
is dead, too! I remember it all, now. And the blood! Oh, I must get
away, or they will hang me, or electrocute me!"

Five minutes more and the rowboat came to grief on some rocks close to
the side of the stream. It commenced to fill with water, and Margaret
had to wade ashore, which she did, slowly and deliberately, like one in
a dream. Then she passed into the woods. Coming to a thick clump of
bushes, she sank down exhausted, and