her back was toward the windows over
which no curtains had been drawn. In her gay frock, which firelight
and lamplight touched to a brilliant flame color, she must have
appeared to one beyond the panes like a suppliant child begging pardon
for some grave misdoing.

Suddenly Alfaretta screamed, and Molly Breckenridge promptly echoed
her; then bounded to Dorothy's side and snatched the violin from her
hands.

"Stop it, Dolly, stop it! I couldn't help doing that, for in another
minute you'd have had me and--and everybody crazy! What made you----"

"Why, Alfaretta! Whatever is the matter? Why do you stand like that,
pointing out into the night as if you'd seen a ghost?" demanded Jane
Potter, going to her schoolmate and shaking her vigorously. "Don't
yell again. It's--it's more frightful to hear you than it was to be
locked up in that hidden chamber, with a spring-locked trap shut
between you and liberty." Which was the only admission this
self-contained young person ever gave that she had once known fear.

Alfy gulped, shivered, and slowly answered:

"So I did. It--was a ghost. Or--or--just the same as one!
A--lookin'--a lookin' right through the window--with his face--big
and white--He--he wore a hat----"

"Wise ghost! Not to cavort around bare-headed on a damp September
night!" cried Monty, as much to reassure his own shaken nerves as
those of the mountain girl.

"Dorothy's music was so strange--weird you might say--that she's made
us all feel spooky; but we have no apparitions at Deerhurst, let me
tell you," said Herbert, consolingly.

"Huh! You may say what you like, but that one apparited all right. I
seen it with my very own eyes and nobody else's!" retorted Alfaretta,
with such decision and twisting of good English that those who heard
her laughed loudly.

The laughter effectually banished "spookiness" and as now poor Luna
sank down upon the floor in her accustomed drowsiness, her enwrapt
mood already forgotten, the Master lifted her in his strong arms and
carried her away to Dinah and to bed. But as he went he cast one keen
glance toward the windows, where nothing could now be seen--if ever
had been--save the dimly outlined trees beyond. Yet even he almost
jumped when Jim, having followed him from the room, touched his arm
and asked:

"What do you s'pose sent old Oliver Sands to peekin' in our windows?"

[Illustration: THE GHOST AT THE WINDOW.
_Dorothy's House Party._]

CHAPTER XI

M