hildless,' he said. 'All I ask
here is bed and board till you carry me to the churchyard.' He lived
with them for some years, and devoted himself to study. The people of
the neighbourhood venerated him as a sage, and after his death he was
supposed on very special occasions to appear and give the family warning
of future trouble. They say he was seen before the Battle of Culloden,
and several times during the Napoleonic wars; but of course I can't
vouch for that--it's only legend."

Diana, sitting up in bed with the curtains of her cubicle drawn aside to
listen, gave a long-drawn, breathless sigh.

"O-o-o-oh! How gorgeous to belong to a highfaluting family that's got
legends and ghosts. I'm just crazy to hear more. What about the house?
Aren't there any dungeons or built-up skeletons or secret hiding-places?
There _ought_ to be, in a real first-class mediaeval place like this."

Loveday was plaiting her flaxen hair into two long braids; she paused
with the ribbon in her hand.

"I don't know--as you say, there ought to be. I've often
wondered--especially since----" She hesitated.

"Since what?" urged Diana, scenting the beginning of a mystery.

"Since something that happened once."

"When? Oh, _do_ tell me!"

"I've never told anybody."

Diana hopped out of bed, and flung two lace-frilled arms round her
room-mate, clinging to her with the tenacity of a young octopus.

"Oh, Loveday! Ducky! Tell me! I shan't let you go till you promise.
Please! please!" she entreated.

"If you strangle me I can't tell anything. Get back into bed, Diana! I
don't know whether it was really important, but it may have been. It
happened when I was quite a little girl. I had a slight attack of
measles, and of course I was kept in bed. Mother was nursing me, and one
afternoon she went out to do some shopping and left me to have a nap. I
wasn't sleepy in the least, and it was horribly dull staying there all
by myself. I remembered a book I wanted to read which was in the
dining-room bookcase, so I did a most dreadfully naughty thing: I jumped
up, put on my dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and ran downstairs to
fetch _At the Back of the North Wind_. I opened the dining-room door and
marched in, and then I got a surprise, for seated in a chair by the fire
was a stranger. He looked as much surprised as I was.

"'Hallo!' he said. 'We go to bed early in this part of the world, don't
we? Or are we only getting up?'

"I walked to the fi