o for
them. What makes you look so dark? Don't you like the notion of my
lady-visitors?"

"I didn't know that they were to be ladies until you told me," I said;
"and it's none of my business whom you entertain, Mr. Ames."

"There wasn't much of a welcome for them in your face, at any rate," he
answered. "And to tell the truth, I am not much pleased with the
arrangement myself. But they took a sudden fancy for coming, and no
amount of persuasion could induce them to change their minds. It's
hardly a suitable place for ladies; but if they will come, they must
make the best of it."

"How came you ever to take a fancy to this place? and what makes you
spend so much money on it?" I asked.

"You don't like to see the money thrown away," he said, laughing. "The
truth is, that I've got a skeleton, like many another man, and I've been
trying these two years to get away from it. The first time I stopped to
rest under this tree, I felt light-hearted. I don't know why, except it
was some mysterious influence; but I loved the place, and I love it no
less now, although my skeleton has found a lodging-place here too."

"Of course," I said, "and very appropriately. The house was haunted
before you came."

"It was haunted for me afterward," he said softly, more to himself than
to me; "sweet, shadowy visions I should be glad to call up now." And he
turned away and swallowed a sigh.

I pitied him all the way home, and sat up to pity him, looking through
the soft May starlight to see the lamp burning steadily at his window
until after midnight. From that time I seemed to have a trouble,--though
I could scarcely have named or owned it, it was so indefinite.

He came to see me a few days afterward, and sat quite dull and
abstracted until I warmed him up with a little lively opposition. I
vexed him first, and then, when I saw he was interested enough to talk,
I let him have a chance; and I had never seen him so interesting. He
showed me a new phase of his character, and I listened, and answered him
in as few words as possible, that I might lose nothing of the
revelation. When he got up to go away, I asked him where he had been to
learn and think so much since the last autumn. He began to be, I thought
and hoped, what a sterner teaching might have made him before.

He seemed a little embarrassed; said no one else had discovered any
change in him, and he thought it must be only a reflected light. He had
observed that I had "a remarka