and
young Jack Delorme--turn in at the gates of Donaghmore. They have been
talking and laughing merrily; Honor is in good spirits to-night, or
pretends to be; but as they pass inside the gate a silence falls upon
them.

Launce is walking on the grass, well under the trees, Jack Delorme in
the very middle of the gravel path, swinging a light stick, while Honor
and Horace are a little in advance. As they reach the ruins Jack stops.

"I wonder if the old abbot is above ground to-night, Launce," he says.
"It would be only polite of us to pay him a visit if he is."

As the mocking words pass his lips, Honor turns to gaze at the gray
pile, which looks very rugged in the dusk. She stops instantly.

Is she dreaming, she asks herself with a gasp of surprise, or is that a
shape moving slowly between her and the doorless space that leads into
the old quadrangle?

Horace sees it at the same instant; and the solo he is whistling--"My
Queen"--with variations more or less ear-piercing, not to say
distracting, dies away on his lips. He is little better than a lad, and
his scorn of the supernatural is not by any means real.

"Oh, Honor," he exclaims, drawing close to her, "what can it be? Don't
you see something over there?"

"It is a shadow of some branch, dear; it can be nothing else! Wait and
see if the others notice it."

"Honor, I dare not stay!" the boy says nervously. "It is cowardly of
me, I know, but there is a terror on me, and I--oh, what is that?"

A sudden shriek--so long, so shrill, so blood-chilling that the hearers
stand aghast--breaks out upon the still air. A second later it is
followed by an imprecation and a rapid rush of feet, as Launce and Jack
Delorme spring, with one impulse, toward the ruins.

Honor neither stirs nor cries out. She holds her brother's hand tightly
in both her own, and prays in an incoherent fashion; and all the time a
strange unreal feeling is creeping over her.

"Can these things be?" she is asking herself. "Are spirits allowed to
come back and torture the living?"--for this fear is the keenest
torture her vigorous young life has ever known.

It is all over in a few minutes, though it seems to her that they have
been standing there a long time, and then her brother and Jack Delorme
come up to them.

"By George, we nearly had the fellow!" Launce says panting. "Never saw
a nearer shave than he had in my life! I could have sworn he was within
reach of my fist; yet when I struck ou