denly stopped. An
indescribable terror overcame her as she stared at a spot in the garden,
perfectly illuminated by the moonlight not fifty yards from where she
stood. For she saw on its surface a human head--a man's head!--seemingly
on the level of the ground, staring in her direction. A hysterical laugh
sprang from her lips, and she caught at the branches above her or
she would have fallen! Yet in that moment the head had vanished! The
moonlight revealed the empty garden,--the ground she had gazed at,--but
nothing more!

She had never been superstitious. As a child she had heard the negroes
talk of "the hants,"--that is, "the HAUNTS" or spirits,--but had
believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,--the
daughter of their master! She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the
illusions of Larry, and had shared her father's contemptuous disbelief
of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would
have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making
her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for
help. And with it came the sudden conviction that HE had seen this awful
vision, too. This would account for his impatience of her presence and
his rudeness. She felt faint and giddy. Yet after the first shock had
passed, her old independence and pride came to her relief. She would go
to the spot and examine it. If it were some trick or illusion, she would
show her superiority and have the laugh on Starbuck. She set her white
teeth, clenched her little hands, and started out into the moonlight.
But alas! for women's weakness. The next moment she uttered a scream and
almost fell into the arms of Mr. Starbuck, who had stepped out of the
shadows beside her.

"So you see you HAVE been frightened," he said, with a strange, forced
laugh; "but I warned you about going out alone!"

Even in her fright she could not help seeing that he, too, seemed pale
and agitated, at which she recovered her tongue and her self-possession.

"Anybody would be frightened by being dogged about under the trees," she
said pertly.

"But you called out before you saw me," he said bluntly, "as if
something had frightened you. That was WHY I came towards you."

She knew it was the truth; but as she would not confess to her vision,
she fibbed outrageously.

"Frightened," she said, with pale but lofty indignation. "What was there
to frighten me? I'm not a baby, to think I see a b