omantic
precedent."

"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I'd rather it was a
nice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."

"Come on! we'll take in the hamper, and make tea on the deserted
hearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his old
auto."

"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hear
the thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of the
tonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. I
see sheds back there, and I'll try to coax the old Juggernaut into that
lane and so to the sheds."

He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girls
approached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower front
windows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrance
from the side porch was ajar.

"'Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,'" quoted Helen, peering into
the dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."

"There are plenty of windows out, so we'll have light enough," returned
the girl of the Red Mill. "Don't be a 'fraid cat,' Helen."

"That's all right," grumbled her chum. "You're only making a bluff
yourself."

Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no
matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might
have made her shriek and run!

Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. The
hall was dark, but the door into a room at the left--toward the back of
the house--was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old,
rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.

This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate,
altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At the
other, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a china
closet, the doors of which had been removed. These ugly, shallow
caverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On the
hearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.

"What a lonesome, eerie sort of a place," shivered Helen. "Wish the old
car had kept running----"

"Through the rain?" suggested Ruth, pointing outside, where the air was
already gray with approaching moisture.

Down from the higher hills the storm was sweeping. They could smell it,
for the wind leaped in at the broken windows and rustled the shreds of
paper still clinging to the walls of the dining-room.

"This isn't a fit