IT was nearly ten o'clock the following evening when four excited adventurers set out from the Preston house. They carried dark lanterns, while practical Phil had a package of lunch stored away out of sight. She had an idea that sitting up all night in a forlorn, dirty old house was not going to be half as much sport as enthusiastic Madge anticipated.

The little captain was not the only enthusiast in the ghost party, which was composed of herself, Phil, David and Miss Betsey. Miss Betsey Taylor had cast from her the sobriety of years. She was as eager and as interested in their midnight excursion as any young girl could have been. Not that the pursuit of ghosts had been a secret passion of Miss Betsey's. It was only that, at the age of sixty, she was at last beginning to understand how it felt to be young, and she was as ready for adventure as any other one of the party of young folks.

Indeed, she was far more eager than Lillian Seldon, who could not be persuaded even to contemplate the thought of approaching the "ha'nted house." Lillian insisted that it was her duty to stay at home with Eleanor and Miss Jenny Ann.

No one had been told of the proposed trip except Mr. and Mrs. Preston. The ghost party had no intention of allowing practical jokers in the neighborhood to get up "fake spooks" for their entertainment. They were seriously determined to find out why the ancient house was supposed to be inhabited by spirits from another world, and whether David Brewster had seen real ghosts during his visit to the house or only creatures of his own imagination.

Miss Betsey clung tightly to David's arm as they made their way along the dark road. The old lady wore a pale gray dress, with a soft real lace collar around her neck. Recently the houseboat girls had persuaded her to leave off her false side curls and to wave her hair a little over her ears. No change of costume could make Miss Betsey a beauty, but she was improved, and she did look a little less like an old maid. To-night Miss Betsey had concealed her dress with a long, black macintosh cape, which completely enveloped her. With her tall, spare form and her lean, square shoulders Miss Betsey looked like a grenadier. On her head she had tied, with a long gray veil, one of Jack Bolling's soft felt hats.

"Madge, if you keep on prattling such gruesome tales I shall turn back and leave you to your fate," expostulated Phil, as she urged Madge along behind David and their chaperon. "I know nothing will happen to-night, except that we will all be dead tired and wish we were safe at home in our little beds. Good gracious, what was that?" Phil gave Madge's arm a sudden pinch. "That" was an old woman hobbling along the road in the opposite direction from the four adventurers.

"Scat!" cried Miss Betsey nervously as the woman came face to face with her.

David laughed and took off his hat in the dark. The old woman had picked up her skirts and started to scurry off as fast as she could. But as she caught sight of Miss Betsey's face in the light of the lantern that David carried the old mammy paused. She was the "Mammy Ellen" to whom Mrs. Preston had talked on the day of the drive to the "ha'nted house."

"Land sakes alive, chillun, how you scairt me!" grumbled the old woman. "When you done said 'Scat!' I thought certain you'd seen a black cat, and it jest nacherally means bad luck. Ain't you the lady I seen with Mrs. Preston?" inquired Mammy Ellen of Miss Betsey, with the marvelous memory that colored people have for faces.

Miss Betsey nodded. "I wish you would come to see me in the morning, Mammy," suggested Miss Betsey. "Long years ago I used to know Mr. John Randolph, and Mrs. Preston tells me you were a member of his family. We can't stop to-night. We are going—on up the road," concluded Miss Taylor vaguely.

Even in the darkness Madge and Phyllis could see the whites of Mammy Ellen's eyes grow larger. "You ain't a-goin' near the house of 'ha'nts,' is you? If you do, you'll sure meet trouble, one of you, I ain't a saying which. But ef you disturb a dead ghost, he am just as apt to put his ice cold fingers on you, and you ain't no more good after that. You am sure enough done for."

"Why not, Auntie?" inquired Madge, her blue eyes dancing. Meeting this aged colored woman with her mysterious tale of ghost signs and warnings was the best possible beginning for their lark.

"Child, ef a ghost's cold fingers teches you, your heart grows stone cold. There ain't nobody that loves you and you don't love nobody ever after. Don't you go near that old house, chilluns. It ain't no place for the likes of you," pleaded Mammy Ellen. "I tell you there am more buried there than youall knows. That old house am a grave for the young and the old. Mind what I say. It sure am.""Why do you think we are going to the 'ghost house,' Mammy?" queried David, laughing.

The old colored woman shook her head slowly. "It ain't caze I think youall's going to the old place that I warn ye; it am only caze I's so afeerd you might. I know there ain't nobody, in their right good senses as would want their wits scairt clean out of 'em."

"But we don't believe in ghosts, Mammy," argued Madge.

Mammy Ellen peered into Madge's bright face. "Go 'long, child," she said. "You don't believe in ghosts caze you ain't seen 'em, jest as ye don't believe in most of the things you's got to find out."

Mammy Ellen bowed courteously to Miss Betsey and the young people as she walked away from them.

"I do wish we hadn't met that old colored woman, Madge," whispered Phil. "She makes me feel as though we were intruding on ghosts when we go prying about their haunts at night."

Every leaf of every tree, every rustling blade of grass, every stirring breath of the night wind took on a more sinister character as the four ghost-investigators slipped up the tangled, overgrown path to the house of mystery.

"We must put out all our lanterns but one," ordered David. "If any one happens to be walking along the road, we don't wish them to see us prowling about this place. Besides, we don't want to frighten the ghosts."

The three women put out the light of their lanterns. David kept his light, walking in front, with Miss Betsey next and Madge and Phyllis bringing up the rear. The women clutched at one another's skirts as they went around and around the dark old house, tumbling over crumbling bricks and tangled vines. They thought it best to look thoroughly around the outside of the house for loiterers, whether ghostly or real, before exploring the inside.

"'Chickamy, chickamy, crainey crow, went to the well to wash her toe! When she came back her chickens were all gone.' What time is it, old Witch?" murmured Madge, giving Phil's skirt a wicked pull. Phil fell back, almost upsetting Miss Betsey, who clutched feverishly at David's coatsleeve.

"What on earth happened to you, child?" she asked tremulously.

"It was that good-for-nothing Madge's fault," laughed Phyllis.

No one of the party took the first part of their ghost hunt seriously, but when David reported that the hour was growing late, and that it was now time for them to enter the old house, a different feeling stole over each one of them—a kind of curious foreboding of evil, or unhappiness, or some unexplainable mystery.

"Let's give up and go back, Madge," proposed Phyllis. "The old house is so musty, dark and horrible that it is sure to have rats in it, if nothing worse. I feel that it would be better for all of us not to go in. Suppose we should see something queer? What could we do?"

"Phyllis Alden, the very idea of your suggesting that we turn 'quitters'!" expostulated Madge. "Do you suppose we could face Miss Jenny Ann and the girls if we retreat before we even know there is an enemy? Come on, Miss Betsey; you and I will go on ahead. Let Phil come with David if she likes."

Madge danced up the old, tumbled-down veranda steps, guided by the rays of her lantern. Each one of the women had relit her lantern to enter the deserted house. Once inside they might put them out again. But who could tell what they might stumble against in a house that was supposed never to have been entered in nearly forty years?

Madge pushed at the front door, which hung by a broken hinge, and drew Miss Betsey in after her. "Oh, dear me, isn't it awful?" she whispered.

Not one of the ghost party had spoken in an ordinary voice since the start of their adventure. Somehow their errand, the darkness of the night and their own feelings made whispered tones seem more appropriate.

The four explorers gazed silently at the sight that Madge described as "awful." They had expected to find the "ha'nted house" empty of furniture. Yet in the broad hall there was an open fireplace. On either side of it were great oak arm-chairs. Spider webs hung in beautiful silver festoons from the mantel, with their many-legged spinners caught in their mesh. Gray mice, lean and terrified, scuttled across the dusty floor. A bat flapped blindly overhead.

Miss Betsey caught Madge by the hand. "I can almost see dead people sitting in those dusty chairs," she murmured. "Let us go on upstairs. I wish this thing were over."

The railing had fallen away from the steps, that were covered not only with dust but with a kind of slippery mould, as many winters' rain had fallen down upon them from the holes in the roof. David crawled up first, pulling Madge, Phyllis and Miss Betsey after him. They groped their way to the front bedroom.

"I won't go in there; I shall wait here in the hall," Phil said pettishly. "I can't help thinking of Harry Sears's story about the sick girl in that old house on Cape Cod."

David shoved at the closed door. It was fastened tight. Had the room been locked against intruders for nearly half a century? But ghosts do not hesitate at closed doors. David pushed harder than he knew. The lock on the old door gave way. It fell forward, striking the floor with a terrific crash.

Phyllis screamed with horror, then turned rigid. Not one of the others made a single sound, except that Madge's lantern dropped to the floor at her feet and her light went out.

An old man rose slowly from the side of a tumbled bed. He was so thin, so white, so ethereal that he could not be human. But the four pair of frightened eyes strained past the ghostly old man to a thin wraith that lay on the bed. It was a girl, frail, white and wasted, staring not at the intruders before the fallen door, but at an object that she seemed to see afar off.

Madge's voice caught in her throat. Her knees trembled and she swayed helplessly toward Phil. If only she and Phil could have run from the sight before them! But they stood stupidly still, unable to move. There was absolutely not a ray of light in the ghostly bedroom, save that which came from the reflection of the dark lanterns in the hall. David had jumped back when the door fell before him. But Miss Betsey's tall, thin figure, in her queer, military coat, cast a long black shadow across the old room. Why did not some one speak? Ghosts can not talk and the onlookers were dumb with fear and amazement.

Then the ghost laughed drearily. "You have found me out," it said mournfully. "I have no place, even in this house of darkness. I can not see your faces. But I wonder why you wish to disturb an old man's last retreat?"

For answer, Madge burst into tears. She was nervous and overwrought, and to find that "the ghost" was a real person was more than she could bear.

"We didn't know there was any one living in the house," she faltered. "We are strangers in this neighborhood. The people about here told us that this old place was haunted, and we came to-night to see if ghosts were real."

"Come in and bring your lights," invited the old gentleman. "There are many kinds of ghosts, child. I will tell you who I am."

The four visitors crowded into the musty room. Phyllis and Madge had their eyes fixed on the girl's figure in the bed. She did not return their look, although the muscles of her face were twitching pathetically.

Miss Betsey Taylor was behaving very curiously. She held her dark lantern up so that its light fell full on the white face of the old man whom they had so rudely disturbed."Bless my soul!" she murmured out loud, "it can't be!"

"My name is John Randolph," explained the old gentleman, with a fine stateliness. "My grandchild and I have been living in this deserted house because we had no other home in the world."

"I knew it!" announced Miss Betsey. "Isn't it just like John Randolph! Would rather bury himself alive than let his friends take care of him. Southern pride!" sniffed Miss Betsey. "I call it Southern foolishness."

"Madam," answered Mr. Randolph coldly, "I have no friends. I can not see that I have done wrong to any one by hiding away in this old place, that was once the property of my friends. If people have thought of me as a ghost, and I have tried to encourage them in the idea, well, lives that are finished and have no place in the world are but ghosts of the unhappy past."

"Nonsense!" said Miss Betsey vigorously, her black eyes snapping, though she felt a curious lump in her throat. "You were always a sentimentalist, John Randolph. But you can't live on memories. You still are obliged to eat and to breathe God's fresh air. How do you do it?"

If the broken old man wondered why Miss Betsey Taylor took such an interest in his affairs, he was too courteous to show it.

"An old colored woman, 'Mammy Ellen,' who was a girl in our family when I was a young man, has not forgotten us. She brings us each day such food as she can procure. As for air"—the old man hesitated—"we do not go out in the daytime. I prefer that the people of the neighborhood should think of me as dead. But at night my little grand-daughter and I walk about over the old place."

Madge, Phil and David gasped involuntarily. They had been silent and amazed listeners to the dialogue between the two old people. Now the thought of a girl younger than themselves being shut up all day in this dreadful house, and only being allowed to go out-of-doors at night was too dreadful to contemplate.

"Oh, but surely you can't keep your little grand-daughter shut away from the daylight!" exclaimed impetuous Madge, her face alive with sympathy as she gazed at the thin little form on the bed.

"Daylight and darkness are as one to my little girl," the old gentleman answered quietly, "she is blind."

Madge shivered. Phil went over to the bed and patted the girl's hand softly. But they both longed, with all their hearts, to get away from this house of tragedy. It was strange that Miss Betsey did not offer to go and leave the old man and child to their privacy.

Miss Betsey's black eyes were no longer snapping; they were wet with tears.

"I am coming to take you both away from this place in the morning, John Randolph. If you won't come for your own sake, you must come for the child's. So like a man not to know that that poor baby needs to feel all the more sunlight because she can't see it! And she may even be able to see it some day with proper care." Miss Betsey bent over the child so caressingly that she looked more like a funny old angel in her strange, long cape and her ridiculous hat than a selfish, cross-grained old maid.

"I do not understand your kindness, Madam," returned the old gentleman with courteous curiosity.

"Because I am your friend," answered Miss Betsey curtly. "I'm Betsey Taylor, whom you used to know a great many years ago. You have forgotten me because you have had many interests in your life that have crowded me out. But I—I have remembered," concluded Miss Betsey abruptly. "Good night." She swung her dark lantern and, looking more than ever like a grenadier, led the little procession out.