Bubbles said wistfully: "You
won't leave off caring for me, Bill? Not even if I marry somebody else?
Not even--?" She laughed nervously, and her laugh, to Donnington a
horrible laugh, echoed through the dimly lit church. "Not even," she
repeated, "if I bring myself to marry Mr. Tapster?"

He seized her roughly by the arm. "What d'you mean, Bubbles?" he asked
sternly.

"Don't do that! You hurt me--I was only joking," she said, shrinking
back. "But you are really _too_ simple, Bill. Didn't it occur to you
that Mr. Tapster had been asked here for me?"

"For you?" He uttered the words mechanically. He understood now why men
sometimes murder their sweet-hearts--for no apparent motive.

"He's not a bad sort. It isn't his fault that he's so repulsive. It
wouldn't be fair if he was as rich as that, and good-looking, and
amiable, and agreeable, as well--would it?"

They were walking down the church, and perhaps Bubbles caught a glimpse
into his heart: "I'm a beast," she exclaimed. "A beast to have spoiled
our time together in this dear old church by saying that to you about
Mr. Tapster. Try and forget it, Bill!"

He made no answer. His brain was in a whirlwind of wrath, of suspicion,
of anger, of sick jealousy. This was the real danger--not all the
nonsense that Bubbles talked about her power of raising ghosts, and of
being haunted by unquiet spirits. The real danger the girl was in now
was that of being persuaded into marrying that loathsome Tapster--for
his money.

He left her near the door while he went back to put out the lights. Then
he groped his way to where she was standing, waiting for him. In the
darkness he looked for, found, and lifted, the heavy latch. Together
they began pacing down the path between the graves in the churchyard,
and then all of a sudden he put his hand on her arm: "What's that?
Hark!" he whispered.

He seemed to hear issuing from the grand old church a confused, musical
medley of sounds--a bleating, a neighing, a lowing, even a faint
trumpeting, all mingling together and forming a strange, not unmelodious
harmony.

"D'you hear anything, Bubbles?" he asked, his heart beating, his face,
in the darkness, all aglow.

"No, nothing," she answered back, surprised. "We must hurry, Bill. We're
late as it is."

CHAPTER IX

It had been Bubbles' happy idea that the children of the tiny hamlet
which lay half-a-mile from Wyndfell Hall, should have a Christmas tree.
Hers, also, that the t