ll? You heard that, at least, Mrs Ragg?"

"Yes," Mrs Ragg had heard that, certainly. She admitted the fact as if
it had been a sin, with a look of actual horror upon her face.

"You heard?" asked Julia of me in a kind of triumph as we were alone.
"There was not a sound through all the night. I never rapped upon the
wall. Now, why is she lying? It may be nothing to you, but I mean to
know."

Once more that morning, coming from our own rooms, dressed for walking,
Julia tried the caretaker's door. Finding it fast, shook it, and turned
from doing so to find Mrs Ragg, arrived on the scene in her felt shoes,
standing behind her.

"Asking your pardon, miss, that is my room," the woman said; with a
feeble kind of offence she went and put herself before the door.

"We have hired the cottage; I presume we have the right to look even
into your room, if we deem it advisable," Julia said, with her
haughtiest air. "So, you always keep your room locked, Mrs Ragg?"

"When strangers are about I do," Mrs Ragg replied; and although she was
apparently afraid of us she gazed upon us with no goodwill.

As we left the house, Julia called my attention to the fact that the
blind in the room next to her own was drawn. "All the same, I don't
sleep again beneath your Mrs Ragg's roof till I've been into her
bedroom," she declared.

I had come to Starbay for the benefit of the sea. Julia, however, would
not allow me to make nearer acquaintance with it than that possible
from my window, but dragged me into the town again. We put down our
names at one of the circulating libraries, and, it coming on to rain,
could think of no better than to go upstairs to the reading-room.

It happened to have only one other occupant. A man of early middle-age,
who, with the marks of delicate health upon him, had a face which, like
that of "my Uncle Toby's," invited confidence.

Julia, for a minute, as we settled to read, looked across the table at
him with her direct, sea-green gaze; then turned to her paper and
looked no more until she put the paper down and began to talk to him.

It was easy enough to begin with a question about a certain magazine.
"Did they take it there?" and to follow on with half a dozen enquiries
about the town, and the objects of interest in the neighbourhood. I
listened for a minute or two, reflecting how to my young sister any
human document, however casually picked up, exceeded in interest the
finest book ever written, then went