house. An
old miser lived there long ago. One night he was robbed and murdered,
and his ghost still haunts the place. No one ventures in its vicinity,
and she said most likely we were the first people who had gone there
since the tragedy. She told us of a nearer way to reach it. You take
the road to Windy Creek, and about two miles below here, turn into a
lane and then go through a grove and over a hill."

"You don't really believe the story, that is, the ghost part of it?"
asked Rossiter.

"N--o," allowed Beth. "Still, I'd like to. It makes it interesting.
Ptolemy and I are going down there some night to see if we can find
the ghost."

"You won't see one," I assured her. "Ptolemy's presence would be
sufficient to keep even a ghost in the background."

"Ptolemy's a peach," declared Beth emphatically.

"If he were older, you wouldn't think so," said Rob.

"Why not?" asked Beth in surprise, or seeming surprise.

He smiled enigmatically, and irrelevantly asked her if she wouldn't
really be afraid to go to the haunted house at night with only Ptolemy
for protection.

She assured him she shouldn't be afraid of a ghost if she saw one, and
that she shouldn't be afraid to go alone.

Throughout the evening, which we spent in rowing, walking, and later
at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the
puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would
avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common
politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born
coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. Instead, to
my surprise, their roles were reversed. He appeared interested in her
every remark and looked at her often and intently. He was quite
assiduous in his attentions which, strange to say, she discouraged,
not with the deep design of a flirt to increase his ardor, but with a
calm firmness that admitted of no doubt as to her feelings.

"Your sister," he remarked to me as we were walking down to the lake
for a swim just before going to bed, "is a very unusual type."

"Not at all!" I assured him. "Beth is the true feminine type which you
have never taken the trouble to know."

"Oh, come, Lucien! Not feminine, you know. Though she is inconsistent."

I resented the imputation hotly, but he only laughed and said that he
guessed it was true that a man didn't understand the women in his
family as well as an outsider did.

"You think," I said, "just becaus