ther's natural timidity was increased by Marie's treatment. At first
she made feeble efforts to converse, but finding herself continually
repressed, gradually ceased from her endeavors to make friends with
Marie.

Not only her timidity, but her nervousness, as well, grew on her. She
began to be startled at every sudden sound.

Now Marie was a girl without "nerves," in the ordinary sense of the
word, and could not understand or sympathize with those who are
constituted differently. She really believed poor Esther's nervousness
to be affectation, and had no patience with it.

"She's been coddled all her life, evidently," she reflected, "until now
she expects every one to pet her on account of her foolish nervous
tricks. She needs a process of hardening."

If Marie had not really believed this, I do not think she would have put
into execution a plan which suggested itself to her the week before
Thanksgiving.

It was a cruel scheme, and even though she assured herself that it was
really for Esther's good and that it would cure the nervousness, I think
she was at heart a little ashamed of herself all the time.

[Illustration:
"WHAT WAS THAT BY THE TELESCOPE? A WHITE, TALL FIGURE STOOD BY THE
INSTRUMENT."]

At the western end of the third floor there was a stairway leading up to
a room at the top of the building, which was occasionally used as an
observatory.

A telescope was mounted there, but, as it was not very powerful, the
astronomy classes generally used one at the private residence of their
professor instead.

The room, being so seldom used, had become a receptacle for old lumber
of all sorts. Girls are so fond of exercising their imagination that it
is not strange that they gradually invested the garret-like room at the
top of the house with the reputation of being "haunted."

The ghost, who was said to walk up and down the old stairway and over
the creaking floor of the observatory, was thought to be that of a
certain Madame Leverrier, who had been teacher of French and astronomy
many years before, and had died in the school.

It was said that at midnight the tall, white figure of the Frenchwoman
might be seen, peering through the telescope at the stars she had loved
so well.

To-be-sure, no girl ever said she herself, had seen this sight, but she
had "heard about it from a last year's girl."

So the girls got in the habit of walking very rapidly when they had
occasion to go past the stairway, which