and enter his house through a closed side door. After
awhile Mrs. Smith became ill from the strain and she sent for a
physician who had been living in the neighborhood a long time. The
doctor did not wish to come to see Mrs. Smith just at first. When he did
he related his own experience in the same house years before. He had
just moved into the neighborhood, as a young physician, when one night,
at about midnight, he was aroused by some one ringing his bell. An old
man asked the doctor to come with him at once, as a young girl, his
grand-daughter, was dangerously ill. Dr. Block went with the old
gentleman. He found the young girl, dying with consumption, in a room on
the second floor of a house. An old lady was with her, but the doctor
saw no one else. He wrote a prescription, put it on the mantel-piece and
said he would come back in the morning."

Harry stopped talking. A distant roll of thunder interrupted him.

"Do hurry, Harry; we must be off!" exclaimed Jack Bolling.

"The next morning the doctor went back to the same house. It was closed
and boarded up, and the caretaker told the physician that no one had
lived in the house for many years. The doctor was indignant, so the
caretaker opened the door and let Dr. Block into the house, so he could
see for himself that it was empty. The hall was covered with dust, but
a single pair of footprints could be seen going from the hall door to
the bedroom on the second floor. The old man had left no tracks. The
physician entered the room, which was empty. There was no old man, no
old woman, no sick girl, not even a bed, but"--Harry made a dramatic
pause--"the doctor walked over to the mantel-piece and there lay the
prescription that he had written the night before!"

"Oh, my! Oh, my!" exclaimed Lillian. She was on her feet, pointing with
trembling fingers toward a window of the old house which was back of the
rest of the party. "I am sure I saw a face at that window," she cried.
"No one will believe me, but I did, I did! It was a girl's face, too,
very white and thin. Please take me away from here."

Madge slipped her arms about the frightened Lillian. For an instant she
almost believed that she, too, had seen the specter that must have been
born of Lillian's overwrought imagination as a result of the ghost
stories she had just heard.

Madge and Lillian led the way down the tangled path from the haunted
house. They were some distance from the others when the little capta