on flashed upon her
sight that sent the blood from her ruddy cheek to her brave heart, and
shook the foundations of her unbelief!

For while she gazed, suddenly that dark window was illumed by a
strange, unearthly light that streamed forth into the gloomy evening
air, and touched with blue flame the quivering leaves of every tree in
its brilliant line! In the midst of this lighted window appeared a
white female face wild with woe! And then the face suddenly vanished
and the light was swallowed up in darkness!

Capitola remained transfixed!

"Great heaven!" she thought, "can these things really be! Have the
ghostly traditions of this world truth in them at last? When I heard
this story of the haunted window I thought some one had surely imagined
or invented it! Now I have seen for myself; but if I were to tell what
I have seen not one in a hundred would believe me!"

While these startling thoughts disturbed her usual well-balanced mind,
a vivid flash of lightning, accompanied by a tremendous peal of thunder
and a heavy fall of rain, roused her into renewed activity.

"Gyp, my boy, the storm is upon us sure enough! We shall catch it all
around, get well drowned, beaten and buffeted here and well abused when
we get home! Meantime, Gyp, which is the worst, the full fury of the
tempest or the mysterious terrors of the Haunted House!"

Another blinding flash of lightning, a stunning crash of thunder, a
flood of rain and tornado of wind decided her.

"We'll take the Haunted House, Gyp, my friend! That spectral lady of
the lighted window looked rather in sorrow than in anger, and who knows
but the ghosts may be hospitable? So gee up, Dobbin!" said Capitola,
and, urging her horse with one hand and holding on her cap with the
other, she went on against wind and rain until she reached the front of
the old house.

Not a creature was to be seen; every door and window was closely shut.
Dismounting, Capitola led her horse under the shelter of a thickly
leaved oak tree, secured him, and then holding up her saturated skirt
with one hand and holding on her cap with the other, she went up some
moldering stone steps to an old stone portico and, seizing the heavy
iron knocker of a great black oak double door, she knocked loudly
enough to awaken all the mountain echoes.

She waited a few minutes for an answer, but receiving none, she knocked
again, more loudly than before. Still there was no reply. And growing
impatient, she seize