ace, he noticed, had grown pale, and a troubled look
had entered her eyes. She shivered.

"What an uncomfortable place! I can guess what Clara meant. Don't you
get an impression of great suffering, Jim?"

He was familiar with her superstitious sensibility which at times seemed
nearly psychic. It irritated him that to his own matter-of-fact mind the
house had from the first conveyed a sense of unhealth. As he started to
laugh at her, Nora with a quick movement shrank against the wall.

"What's that?" she whispered.

Garth strained forward, listening, too. He had heard what Clara had
described, a crying, smothered and scarcely audible, and he knew what
the girl had meant when she had spoken of a voice from the grave--a dead
voice.

Across the moaning cut a shrill feminine scream.

"Stay here," Garth called to Nora as he started up the stairs.

He heard her voice, like an echo behind him, as full of misgivings as
Clara's had been.

"I am afraid."

At the foot of the attic stairs he saw the white figure of Mrs. Taylor,
staring upward, trembling, hysterical, a violent fear in her eyes.

"You heard it, too," she breathed. "It wasn't the wind."

With a shuddering gesture she indicated McDonald's still form.

"He isn't dead," Garth said.

While she relaxed a little the fear in her eyes didn't diminish.

"I--I heard her moan," she said. "I opened my door, and there she was--a
black thing--bending over him like--like a vampire. I couldn't seem to
see her face. She ran up these stairs, and I could see through the
banisters that she went in the big attic room--the room they always
talked about where the woman--"

She broke off, screaming sharply again.

"Look out! Back of you! There's something black creeping up the
stairs--"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STAINED ROBE

Garth had been aware of Nora's slow ascent. As he turned she reached the
upper floor and the light from the well caught her face.

"A friend who has just come," Garth explained to Mrs. Taylor. "There is
nothing to frighten you. The woman you saw is McDonald's daughter. I had
satisfied myself she was in the house. We are pretty near our goal now."

"But why," Nora asked, "should McDonald's daughter cry through the house
in this fashion? Why didn't Mrs. Taylor see her face?"

But Garth had started up the stairs. The two women followed, as if each
was unwilling to be left alone. Garth snapped on his pocket lamp. The
light shone on the only two