n is only your great-uncle, there ought to be a way to deal with
him----"

"I've just got to talk to Aunt Tillie," Beth broke in, moving toward the
door. Peter followed her, taking up his hat.

"I'll go with you," he said.

For a few moments Beth said nothing. She had passed through the stages
of surprise, anger and bewilderment, and was now still indignant but
quite self-contained. When he thought of Beth's description of the Ghost
of Black Rock House, Peter was almost tempted to forget the terrors of
the redoubtable McGuire. A man of his type hardly lapses into hysteria
at the mere thought of a "bandy-legged buzzard." And yet McGuire's
terrors had been so real and were still so real that it was hardly
conceivable that Bray could have been the cause of them. Indeed it was
hardly conceivable that the person Beth described could be a source of
terror to any one. What was the answer?

"Aunt Tillie doesn't know anything about McGuire," Beth said suddenly.
"She just couldn't know. She tells me everything."

"But of course it's possible that McGuire and this John Bray could have
met in New York----"

"What would Mr. McGuire be doin' with him?" she said scornfully.

Peter laughed.

"It's what he's doing with McGuire that matters."

"I don't believe it's Bray," said Beth confidently. "I don't believe
it."

They had reached a spot where the underbrush was thin, and Beth, who had
been looking past the tree trunks toward the beginnings of the lawns,
stopped suddenly, her eyes focusing upon some object closer at hand.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing.

Peter followed the direction of her gaze. On a tree in the woods not far
from the path was a square of cardboard, but Beth's eyes were keener
than Peter's, and she called his attention to some writing upon it.

They approached curiously. With ironic impudence the message was
scrawled in red crayon upon the reverse of one of Jonathan McGuire's
neat trespass signs, and nailed to the tree by an old hasp-knife. Side
by side, and intensely interested, they read:

TO MIKE MCGUIRE

I'VE COME BACK.

YOU KNOW WHAT I'VE GOT AND I KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT.
ACT PRONTO. I'LL COME FOR MY ANSWER AT ELEVEN FRIDAY
NIGHT--AT THIS TREE. NO TRICKS. IF THERE'S NO
ANSWER--YOU KNOW WHAT I'LL DO.

HAWK.

"Hawk!" muttered Beth, "who on earth----?"

"Another----," said Peter cryptically.

"You see!" cried Beth triumphantly, "I knew it could