and I went about with a permanent crick in each of our necks,
got by looking over our shoulders for a thing with a master-key, that
could let in horses, and open doors, and leave no tracks behind it on
the snow. It lurked in the dark when we turned corners, and many's the
time we felt it spring on our shoulders out of the dusk of the rafters.

My, but Bob was scared! Me, too, when it came to pass--as it often
did--that mother, in her moanings and wailings, sent me down to the
yard gate to look for father. If anybody had spoken too suddenly to me
then, I should have dropped. And as for Bob Kingsman, he slept in his
little room with shuttered windows on both sides and barricaded doors,
besides a perfect armoury of deadly weapons ready to his hand. He
nearly shot himself more than once, monkeying with them.

I used to tell him that it was all nonsense. For, at any rate, a ghost
wouldn't care for repeating rifles, or even 12-inch guns, let alone his
old horse pistols, that would go off but one time in four.

But he only said, "Fudge, Joe! Ghosts don't need master-keys. They
use keyholes, as a rule."

To which I answered that they couldn't put Dapple through a keyhole, as
she, at least, was not a ghost, but hearty, and taking her oats well.
He did not know exactly what to reply to this, but contented himself
with saying, with the true Bob Kingsman doggedness--

"Well, if he comes, I will plug him."

"Then," said I, "if so be you do, see that it isn't the master you are
loosing off at!"

For somehow it struck me that, after all, my father might have his
reasons for keeping out of the way. He told us so little of his
affairs, and I was always a great one for mysteries, anyway. If there
was none about a thing, I didn't mind making up one. It didn't strain
me any!

Yet now, when I come to think of it, these days with Elsie were very
happy ones. Not that I got much out of it, but just the happiness of
being in the same house with her. She was seldom out of my mother's
room, except when she went downstairs to bring something--such as a
soothing drink or a cloth-covered, india-rubber bag with hot water for
her feet in the cold weather. Elsie slept in a little child's cot with
a folding-down end at the foot of my mother's big bed. It was one of
mother's queer ways about this time that she expected my father back
all the time, and always had his place made down and his night things
laid out every evening.

I