m. They arranged,
however, with Ellesborough to patrol the farm and the neighbourhood after
dark as often as their diminished force would allow.

They were inclined to believe that some half-witted person was concerned,
drawn, perhaps, from the alien population which had been floating through
the district, and bent on mischief or robbery--or a mixture of both.

Rachel meanwhile knew nothing of these consultations. After her
engagement was made public, she began to look so white, so tired and
tremulous, that both Ellesborough and Janet were alarmed. Overwork,
according to Janet, with the threshing, and in the potato-fields. Never
had Rachel worked with such a feverish energy as in these autumn weeks.
Add the excitement of an engagement, said Janet, and you see the result.

She would have prescribed bed and rest; but Rachel scouted the advice.
The alternative was amusement--change of scene--in Ellesborough's
company. Here she was more docile, feverishly submissive and happy,
indeed, so long as Ellesborough made the plans, and Ellesborough watched
over her. Janet wondered at certain profound changes in her. It was, she
saw, the first real passion of Rachel's life.

* * * * *

So Dempsey called in vain. Miss Henderson was in town for a theatre and
shopping. But he saw Janet Leighton, to whom with all the dramatic
additions and flourishes he had now bestowed upon it, he told his story.
Janet, who, on a hint from Hastings, had expected the visitation, was at
any rate glad that Rachel was out of the way, seeing what a strong and
curious dislike she had to the ghost-story, and also to any talk of the
murder from which it originated.

Janet, however, listened, and with a growing and fascinated attention, to
the old tale. Was there some real connection, she wondered, between it
and the creature who had been prowling round the farm? Was some one
personating the ghost, and for what reason? The same queries were
ardently in the mind of Dempsey. He reported Halsey's adventure,
commenting on it indignantly.

"It's some one as knows the story, and is playin' the fool with it. It's
a very impudent thing to do! It's not playing fair, that's what it isn't;
and I'd like to get hold of him."

Janet's mouth twitched. The young man's proprietorial interest in his
grandfather's crime, and annoyance that any one should interfere with it,
turned the whole thing to comedy. Moreover, his fatuous absorption in