noway, the village do-nothing,
enterprising idler and general boys' abettor, beckoned us across the
road. He was on the top of a little knoll, thick with the yellow of
broom and the richer orange of gorse. Here he had stretched himself very
greatly at his ease. For Boyd Connoway knew how to wait, and he was
waiting now. Hurry was nowhere in Boyd's dictionary. Not that he had
ever looked.

In a moment we were over the dyke, careless of the stones that we sent
trickling down to afflict the toes of those who should come after us. We
stood on the top of the mound. Connoway disturbed himself just enough to
sit up for our sakes, which he would not have done for a dozen grown
men. He removed the straw from his mouth, and pointed with it to the
end chimney nearest to the great wood of Marnhoul.

We gazed earnestly, following the straw and gradually we could see,
rising into the still air an unmistakable "pew" of palest blue
smoke--which, as we looked, changed into a dense white pillar that rose
steadily upwards, detaching itself admirably against the deep green
black of the Scotch firs behind.

"There," said Connoway gravely, "yonder is your ghost mending his fire!"

We stood at gaze, uncomprehending, too astonished for speech. We had
come, even the unbelievers of us, prepared for the supernatural, for
something surpassingly eery, and anything so commonplace as the smoke of
a fire was a surprise greater than the sight of all Jo Kettle's
imaginations coming at us abreast.

Yet the people who owned the great house of Marnhoul were far away--few
had ever seen any of them. Their affairs were in the hands of a notable
firm of solicitors in Dumfries. How any mortal could have entered that
great abode, or inhabited it after the manner of men, was beyond all
things inexplicable. But there before us the blue reek continued to
mount, straight as a pillar, till it reached the level of the trees on
the bank behind, when a gentle current of air turned it sharply at right
angles to the south.

Now we heard the tramp of many feet, and beneath us we saw Jo Kettle
with half-a-dozen of his father's workers, and the village constable to
make sure that all was done in due and proper order. To these was joined
a crowd of curious townsmen, eager for any new thing. All were armed to
the teeth with rusty cutlasses and old horse pistols, which, when
loaded, made the expedition one of no inconsiderable peril.

The man with the crowbar applied it