as
haunted. Passers-by on the road after dark said they heard the old
pulley-wheel clanking when no breeze stirred, much as you hear it now.
Some claim to have heard maudlin laughter. Possible purchasers were
frightened away, and Creed grew more and more solitary and misanthropic.
Old Ike hung on, Heaven knows why, though I suppose Creed paid him some
sort of wage.

"Rumors grew. Folks said that neither Ike nor Creed entered this barn
after a time, and no hay was put in, though Creed would not have been
Creed if he had not sold off the bulk of what he had, ghost or no ghost.
I can imagine him slowly forking it out alone, daytimes, and the amount
of hay still here proves that even he finally lost courage."

I paused a moment, but though there was much uneasy stirring about, and
the dismal clanking directly above us was incessant, no one of my
audience spoke. It was wholly dark now, and I think all had drawn closer
together.

"About ten years ago people began calling Creed crazy." Here I was
forced to interrupt my own story. "I shall have to ask you, Miss
Anstell, to stop annoying me. I have been aware for some moments that
you are brushing my head with a straw, but I have ignored it for the
sake of the others." Out of the darkness came Miss Anstell's voice,
protesting earnestly, and I realized from the direction of the sound
that in the general readjustment she must have settled down in the very
center of our circle, and could not be the one at fault. One of the
others was childish enough to simulate a mocking burst of raucous
laughter, but I chose to ignore it.

"Very well," said I, graciously; "shall I go on?"

"Go on," echoed a subdued chorus.

"It was the night of the twenty-eighth of May, ten years ago----"

"Not the twenty-eighth," broke in my wife's voice, sharply; "that is
to-day's date." There was a note in her voice that I hardly recognized,
but it indicated that she was in some way affected by my narration, and
I felt a distinct sense of triumph.

"It was the night of May twenty-eighth," I repeated firmly.

"Are you making up this story?" my wife's voice continued, still with
the same odd tone.

"I am, my dear, and you are interrupting it."

"But an Ashley Turner and later a Peter Creed owned this place," she
persisted almost in a whisper, "and I am sure you never heard of them."

I confess that I might wisely have broken off my story then and called
for a light. There had been an hysterical not