eyes for fear of the following horror
they might see upon the stairs above.

With trembling hands Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked
out into the moonlight and drew a deep breath of the cool night air
blowing in from the sea.

A HAUNTED ISLAND

The following events occurred on a small island of isolated position in
a large Canadian lake, to whose cool waters the inhabitants of Montreal
and Toronto flee for rest and recreation in the hot months. It is only
to be regretted that events of such peculiar interest to the genuine
student of the psychical should be entirely uncorroborated. Such
unfortunately, however, is the case.

Our own party of nearly twenty had returned to Montreal that very day,
and I was left in solitary possession for a week or two longer, in order
to accomplish some important "reading" for the law which I had foolishly
neglected during the summer.

It was late in September, and the big trout and maskinonge were stirring
themselves in the depths of the lake, and beginning slowly to move up to
the surface waters as the north winds and early frosts lowered their
temperature. Already the maples were crimson and gold, and the wild
laughter of the loons echoed in sheltered bays that never knew their
strange cry in the summer.

With a whole island to oneself, a two-storey cottage, a canoe, and only
the chipmunks, and the farmer's weekly visit with eggs and bread, to
disturb one, the opportunities for hard reading might be very great. It
all depends!

The rest of the party had gone off with many warnings to beware of
Indians, and not to stay late enough to be the victim of a frost that
thinks nothing of forty below zero. After they had gone, the loneliness
of the situation made itself unpleasantly felt. There were no other
islands within six or seven miles, and though the mainland forests lay a
couple of miles behind me, they stretched for a very great distance
unbroken by any signs of human habitation. But, though the island was
completely deserted and silent, the rocks and trees that had echoed
human laughter and voices almost every hour of the day for two months
could not fail to retain some memories of it all; and I was not
surprised to fancy I heard a shout or a cry as I passed from rock to
rock, and more than once to imagine that I heard my own name called
aloud.

In the cottage there were six tiny little bedrooms divided from one
another by plain unvarnished partitions