f the men seem to have seen her--but quite
a number of the women did. The post-mistress says she could have sworn
to her anywhere."

"What absolute nonsense!"

Blanche felt shocked as well as vexed.

"It was when Mr. Varick was making that speech of his," said Pegler
slowly. "If you'll pardon me, ma'am, for saying so, it don't seem
nonsense to me. After what I've seen myself, I can believe anything.
Seeing is believing, ma'am."

"People's eyes very often betray them, Pegler. Haven't you sometimes
looked at a thing and thought it something quite different from what it
really was?"

"Yes, I have," acknowledged Pegler reluctantly. "And of course, the
lighting was very bad. Some of the people hope that Mr. Varick's going
to bring electric light into the village--d'you think he'll do that,
ma'am?"

"No," said Miss Farrow decidedly. "I shouldn't think there's a hope of
it. The village doesn't really belong to him, Pegler. It was wonderfully
kind of him to give what he did give to-day, to a lot of people with
whom he has really nothing to do at all."

And then, after her maid had gone, Blanche lay in bed, and stared into
the still bright fire. Her brain seemed abnormally active, and she found
it impossible to go to sleep. What a curious, uncanny, uncomfortable
story--that of "poor Milly's" ghost appearing on the little platform of
the village school-room! There seems no measure, even in these
enlightened days, to what people will say and believe.

And then there flashed across her a recollection of the fact that
Bubbles had been there, sitting just below Lionel Varick. Strange,
half-forgotten stories of Indian magic--of a man hung up in chains
padlocked by British officers, and then, a moment later, that same man,
freed, standing in their midst, the chains rattling together,
empty--floated through Blanche Farrow's mind. Was it possible that
Bubbles possessed uncanny powers--powers which had something to do with
the immemorial magic of the immemorial East?

Blanche had once heard the phenomenon of the vanishing rope trick
discussed at some length between a number of clever people. She had paid
very little attention to what had been said at the time, but she now
strained her memory to recapture the sense of the words which had been
uttered. One of the men present, a distinguished scientist, had actually
seen the trick done. He had seen an Indian swarm up the rope and
disappear--into thin air! What had he called it? C