chool-teacher's evident reluctance to hear her. She even, since she
sat next to her, nudged her familiarly in her rigid black silk side.

"What room are you in, Miss Stark?" said she.

"I am at a loss how to designate the room," replied Miss Stark stiffly.

"Is it the big southwest room?"

"It evidently faces in that direction," said Miss Stark.

The librarian, whose name was Eliza Lippincott, turned abruptly to Miss
Amanda Gill, over whose delicate face a curious colour compounded of
flush and pallour was stealing.

"What room did your aunt die in, Miss Amanda?" asked she abruptly.

Amanda cast a terrified glance at her sister, who was serving a second
plate of pudding for the minister.

"That room," she replied feebly.

"That's what I thought," said the librarian with a certain triumph. "I
calculated that must be the room she died in, for it's the best room in
the house, and you haven't put anybody in it before. Somehow the room
that anybody has died in lately is generally the last room that anybody
is put in. I suppose YOU are so strong-minded you don't object to
sleeping in a room where anybody died a few weeks ago?" she inquired of
Louisa Stark with sharp eyes on her face.

"No, I do not," replied Miss stark with emphasis.

"Nor in the same bed?" persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish
reflection.

The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very spiritual,
but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he
could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss Gill's cooking.

"You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?" he remarked, with
his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone. "You do not for a
minute believe that a higher power would allow any manifestation on the
part of a disembodied spirit--who we trust is in her heavenly home--to
harm one of His servants?"

"Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not," replied Eliza Lippincott with a blush.
"Of course not. I never meant to imply--"

"I could not believe you did," said the minister gently. He was very
young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety between his
eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips. The lines of
the smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.

"Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian," remarked
the widow, "and I don't suppose a professing Christian would come back
and scare folks if she could. I wouldn't be a mite afraid to sleep in
that ro