th parties, and to give the word when
to begin. He also took out of his valise a pack of cards and a bottle
of poison, telling them that if they wished to avoid carnage they might
cut the cards to see which one should take the poison. Then he waited
anxiously for their reply. For a little space there was silence. Then
he became conscious of a tremulous shivering in one corner of the room,
and he remembered that he had heard from that direction what sounded
like a frightened sigh when he made the first suggestion of the duel.
Something told him that this was the domiciliary ghost, and that it was
badly scared. Then he was impressed by a certain movement in the
opposite corner of the room, as though the titular ghost were drawing
himself up with offended dignity. Eliphalet couldn't exactly see those
things, because he never saw the ghosts, but he felt them. After a
silence of nearly a minute a voice came from the corner where the
family ghost stood--a voice strong and full, but trembling slightly
with suppressed passion. And this voice told Eliphalet it was plain
enough that he had not long been the head of the Duncans, and that he
had never properly considered the characteristics of his race if now he
supposed that one of his blood could draw his sword against a woman.
Eliphalet said he had never suggested that the Duncan ghost should
raise his hand against a woman, and all he wanted was that the Duncan
ghost should fight the other ghost. And then the voice told Eliphalet
that the other ghost was a woman."

"What?" said Dear Jones, sitting up suddenly. "You don't mean to tell
me that the ghost which haunted the house was a woman?"

"Those were the very words Eliphalet Duncan used," said Uncle Larry;
"but he did not need to wait for the answer. All at once he recalled
the traditions about the domiciliary ghost, and he knew that what the
titular ghost said was the fact. He had never thought of the sex of a
spook, but there was no doubt whatever that the house ghost was a
woman. No sooner was this firmly fixed in Eliphalet's mind than he saw
his way out of the difficulty. The ghosts must be married!--for then
there would be no more interference, no more quarrelling, no more
manifestations and materializations, no more dark seances, with their
raps and bells and tambourines and banjos. At first the ghosts would
not hear of it. The voice in the corner declared that the Duncan wraith
had never thought of matrimony. But Elipha