s
gesticulating wildly, with angry gaze directed toward the grinning face
of the pumpkin.

Colonel Witham strode down from the piazza and walked rapidly to the
foot of the flag-staff. He seized the one end of the halyards that
dangled within reach, and jerked hard upon it, endeavouring to shake the
pumpkin from its lofty position. But it was of no avail. Every tug upon
the rope served only to tighten the knot. The colonel glared helplessly
for a moment, and then returned into the inn.

Again he emerged, bearing something in his hand, which he raised and
aimed directly at the gleaming face. A report rang out. The echoes of
the sound of Colonel Witham's shotgun startled the crows in all the
nests around. But the pumpkin stayed. The shot had only buried itself
within its soft shell. The colonel would not give up so easily, however.
Again and again he fired, hoping to shatter the pumpkin, or to sever the
rope that held it.

Presently a shot extinguished the light within; and it was no longer an
easy mark to see. Breathing vengeance upon all the boys for miles
around, Colonel Witham finally gave it up, and retired, vanquished, to
the inn, to await another day. The pumpkin was still aloft.

"Say, Henry," asked George Warren, as they started off up the hill
again, "what did you see in there, anyway? What did you want me to keep
away for?"

Henry Burns, sober-faced and puzzled, gave a groan of disappointment.
"Oh, if you'd only kept away for a moment," he exclaimed. "I can't tell
you now; wait till by and by."

"Jack," he added, addressing his friend, "I'm going down to Benton. Tell
John I couldn't come back. I've got something to do." And, to the
surprise of his companions, Henry Burns left them abruptly, and went
down the road at a rapid pace.

He had something to think over, and he wanted to be alone. What he had
heard puzzled and astounded him. There was a mystery in the old inn, of
which he had caught a fleeting hint. What could it all mean? He turned
it over in his mind a hundred different ways as he walked along; as to
what he had best do; whom he should tell of his strange discovery--what
was the mystery of Bess Thornton's existence?

Certainly the air was full of mystery and strange surprises, this
Hallowe'en night; and the old Ellison house up on the hill was not free
from it. An odd thing happened, also, there. For, passing by the old
cabinet where Benny Ellison hoarded his treasures, something impelled
Mr