ecial affection--a retreat was suddenly provided. As the boys jumped
over the last stile into the lane which led to the Haunted House,
Desmond exclaimed--

"By Jove, the gates are open!"

Then they saw that a man, a sort of caretaker, was in the act of
shutting them.

"May we go in?" John asked civilly.

The man hesitated, eying the boys. Desmond's smile melted him, as it
would have melted a mummy.

"There's nothing to see," he said.

Then, in answer to a few eager questions, he told the story of the
Haunted House; haunted, indeed, by the ghosts of what might have been.
A city magnate owned the place. He had bought it because he wished to
educate his only son at Harrow as a "Home-Boarder," or day-boy. A few
weeks before the boy should have joined the school, he fell ill with
diphtheria, and died. The mother, who nursed him, caught the disease
and died also. The father, left alone, turned his back upon a place he
loathed, resolving to hold it till building-values increased, but never
to set eyes on it again. The caretaker and his wife occupied a couple
of rooms in the house.

The boys glanced at the house, a common-place mansion, and began to
explore the gardens. To their delight they found in the shrubberies,
now a wilderness of laurel and rhododendron, a tower--what our
forefathers called a "Gazebo," and their neighbours a "Folly." The top
of it commanded a wide, unbroken view--

"Of all the lowland western lea,
The Uxbridge flats and meadows,
To where the Ruislip waters see
The Oxhey lights and shadows."

"There's the Spire," said John.

The man, who had joined them, nodded. "Yes," said he, "and my mistress
and her boy are buried underneath it. She wanted him to be there--at
the school, I mean--and there he is."

"We're very much obliged to you," said Desmond. He slipped a shilling
into the man's hand, and added, "May we stay here for a bit? and
perhaps we might come again--eh?"

"Thank you, sir," the man replied, touching his hat. "Come whenever
you like, sir. The gates ain't really locked. I'll show you the trick
of opening 'em when you come down."

He descended the steep flight of steps after the boys had thanked him.

"Sad story," said John, staring at the distant Spire.

Desmond hesitated. At times he revealed (to John alone) a curious
melancholy.

"Sad," he repeated. "I don't know about that. Sad for the father, of
course, but perhaps the son is well out of