e difficult to see from one end of the boat to the other. Dear Jones
tightened the rug which enwrapped Baby Van Rensselaer, and then
withdrew again into his own substantial coverings.

Uncle Larry paused in his story long enough to light another of the
tiny cigars he always smoked.

"I infer that Lord Duncan"--the Duchess was scrupulous in the bestowal
of titles--"saw no more of the ghosts after he was married."

"He never saw them at all, at any time, either before or since. But
they came very near breaking off the match, and thus breaking two young
hearts."

"You don't mean to say that they knew any just cause or impediment why
they should not forever after hold their peace?" asked Dear Jones.

"How could a ghost, or even two ghosts, keep a girl from marrying the
man she loved?" This was Baby Van Rensselaer's question.

"It seems curious, doesn't it?" and Uncle Larry tried to warm himself
by two or three sharp pulls at his fiery little cigar. "And the
circumstances are quite as curious as the fact itself. You see, Miss
Sutton wouldn't be married for a year after her mother's death, so she
and Duncan had lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet
got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with; and
Kitty soon learned all about his family. He didn't tell her about the
title for a long time, as he wasn't one to brag. But he described to
her the little old house at Salem. And one evening towards the end of
the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in
September, she told him that she didn't want a bridal tour at all; she
just wanted to go down to the little old house at Salem to spend her
honeymoon in peace and quiet, with nothing to do and nobody to bother
them. Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion: it suited him down to
the ground. All of a sudden he remembered the spooks, and it knocked
him all of a heap. He had told her about the Duncan banshee, and the
idea of having an ancestral ghost in personal attendance on her husband
tickled her immensely. But he had never said anything about the ghost
which haunted the little old house at Salem. He knew she would be
frightened out of her wits if the house ghost revealed itself to her,
and he saw at once that it would be impossible to go to Salem on their
wedding trip. So he told her all about it, and how whenever he went to
Salem the two ghosts interfered, and gave dark seances and manifested
and materialized and made th