so seriously. That was not like Jane: she was a level-headed
girl, not at all the sort to be frightened by Negroes talking of
ghosts.

She turned suddenly on Willie. The colored boy had been employed in
the Dorrance household since childhood. Jane herself was only
seventeen, and she had known Willie here in this same big white
stone house, almost from infancy.

"Willie, what you saw, was it a--a man?"

"Yes," said the boy eagerly. "A man. A great big man. All white an'
shinin'."

"A man with a hood? Or a helmet? Something like a queer-looking hat
on his head, Willie?"

"Jane!" expostulated Don. "What do you mean?"

"I saw him--saw it," said Jane nervously.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "You did? When? Why didn't you tell us?"

"I saw it last night." She smiled faintly. "I didn't want to add to
these wild tales. I thought it was my imagination. I had been
asleep--I fancy I was dreaming of ghosts anyway."

"You saw it--" Don prompted.

"Outside my bedroom window. Some time in the middle of the night.
The moon was out and the--the man was all white and shining, just as
Willie says."

"But your bedroom," I protested. "Good Lord, your bedroom is on the
upper floor."

But Jane continued soberly, with a sudden queer hush to her voice,
"It was standing in the air outside my window. I think it had been
looking in. When I sat up--I think I had cried out, though none of
you heard me evidently--when I sat up, it moved away; walked away.
When I got to the window, there was nothing to see." She smiled
again. "I decided it was all part of my dream. This morning--well, I
was afraid to tell you because I knew you'd laugh at me. So many
girls down in Somerset have been imagining things like that."

* * * * *

To me, this was certainly a new light on the matter. I think that
both Don and I, and certainly the police, had vaguely been of the
opinion that some very human trickster was at the bottom of all
this. Someone, criminal or otherwise, against whom our shotgun would
be efficacious. But here was level-headed Jane telling us of a man
standing in mid-air peering into her second-floor bedroom, and then
walking away. No trickster could accomplish that.

"Ain't we goin'?" Willie demanded. "I seen it, but it'll be gone."

"Right enough," Don exclaimed grimly. "Come on, Willie."

He disregarded Jane as he walked to the door, but she clung to him.

"I'm coming," she said obstinately, and snat