ER XXXVI
The Supplanter 288

CHAPTER XXXVII
The Return of the Serpent to Eden Valley 297

CHAPTER XXXVIII
By Water and the Word 305

CHAPTER XXXIX
The Wicked Flag 313

CHAPTER XL
The Great 'Tabernacle' Revival 322

CHAPTER XLI
In the Wood Parlour 330

CHAPTER XLII
The Place of Dreams 338

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PART I

CHAPTER I

THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF MARNHOUL

I, Duncan MacAlpine, school-master's son and uncovenanted assistant to
my father, stood watching the dust which the Highflyer coach had left
between me and Sandy Webb, the little guard thereof, as he whirled
onward into the eye of the west. It was the hour before afternoon
school, and already I could hear my father's voice within declaiming as
to unnecessary datives and the lack of all feeling for style in the
Latin prose of the seniors.

A score of the fifth class, next in age and rank, were playing at
rounders in an angle of the court, and I was supposed to be watching
them. In reality I was more interested in a group of tall girls who were
patrolling up and down under the shade of the trees at the head of their
playground--where no boy but I dare enter, and even I only officially.
For in kindly Scots fashion, the Eden Valley Academy was not only open
to all comers of both sexes and ages, but was set in the midst of a wood
of tall pines, in which we seniors were permitted to walk at our guise
and pleasure during the "intervals."

Here the ground was thick and elastic with dry pine needles, two or
three feet of them firmly compacted, and smelling delightfully of resin
after a shower. Indeed, at that moment I was interested enough to let
the boys run a little wild at their game, because, you see, I had found
out within the last six months that girls were not made only to be
called names and to put out one's tongue at.

There was, in especial, one--a dark, slim girl, very lissom of body and
the best runner in the school. She wore