ecidedly. "If it was a ghost it wouldn't
rap: it would come through the keyhole." Liddy looked at the keyhole.
"But it sounds very much as though some one is trying to break into the
house."

Liddy was shivering violently. I told her to get me my slippers and
she brought me a pair of kid gloves, so I found my things myself, and
prepared to call Halsey. As before, the night alarm had found the
electric lights gone: the hall, save for its night lamp, was in
darkness, as I went across to Halsey's room. I hardly know what I
feared, but it was a relief to find him there, very sound asleep, and
with his door unlocked.

"Wake up, Halsey," I said, shaking him.

He stirred a little. Liddy was half in and half out of the door,
afraid as usual to be left alone, and not quite daring to enter. Her
scruples seemed to fade, however, all at once. She gave a suppressed
yell, bolted into the room, and stood tightly clutching the foot-board
of the bed. Halsey was gradually waking.

"I've seen it," Liddy wailed. "A woman in white down the hall!"

I paid no attention.

"Halsey," I persevered, "some one is breaking into the house. Get up,
won't you?"

"It isn't our house," he said sleepily. And then he roused to the
exigency of the occasion. "All right, Aunt Ray," he said, still
yawning. "If you'll let me get into something--"

It was all I could do to get Liddy out of the room. The demands of the
occasion had no influence on her: she had seen the ghost, she
persisted, and she wasn't going into the hall. But I got her over to
my room at last, more dead than alive, and made her lie down on the bed.

The tappings, which seemed to have ceased for a while, had commenced
again, but they were fainter. Halsey came over in a few minutes, and
stood listening and trying to locate the sound.

"Give me my revolver, Aunt Ray," he said; and I got it--the one I had
found in the tulip bed--and gave it to him. He saw Liddy there and
divined at once that Louise was alone.

"You let me attend to this fellow, whoever it is, Aunt Ray, and go to
Louise, will you? She may be awake and alarmed."

So in spite of her protests, I left Liddy alone and went back to the
east wing. Perhaps I went a little faster past the yawning blackness
of the circular staircase; and I could hear Halsey creaking cautiously
down the main staircase. The rapping, or pounding, had ceased, and the
silence was almost painful. And then suddenly, from apparentl