marriage, but they explained that for a long while they had been living on their savings, but that now the higher cost of living had forced them to go into service again.

The woman would have been very handsome except for a defect in her proportions: her face was very much too large. Also, there was a lack of expression in the large, heavy-lidded eyes. The man was the most discreet type of English house servant imaginable, with side whiskers and a small, thin-lipped, slightly caved-in mouth. His eyes were so small that they were almost negligible in the long, narrow head. Their general appearance, however, was presentable, and their manner left nothing to be desired. To me, especially, they were so respectful, so docile, so eager to serve, that I found it almost disconcerting. They had the oddest way of fixing their eyes on me, as though waiting for some sort of signal. Sometimes, I fancied that, far down underneath the servility of those two pairs of eyes, there was a furtive expression of something I could not quite translate, fear, perhaps, or—how can I express it?—a sort of fearful awareness of secret understanding. Perhaps there is no better way to describe it than to say that I should not have been astonished if, looking up quickly into the woman's large, blank, handsome face, I should have surprised a wink. And she would have expected me to understand the wink.

Of course, I did not gather all these impressions at once. It was only as the days went by that I accumulated them. Once, and once only, Henry Lorrence, the new man, was guilty of a real impertinence. I had been busy in the bookroom with my interminable, but delightful, task of dusting and arranging Mr. Brane's books in Paul Dabney's company, and, hearing Mary's voice calling from the garden rather anxiously for "Miss Gale," I came out suddenly into the hall. Henry was standing there near the door of the bookroom, doing nothing that I could see, though he certainly had a dust-cloth in his hand. He looked not at all abashed by my discovery of him; on the contrary, that indescribable look of mutual understanding or of an expectation of mutual understanding took strong possession of his face.

"I see you're keepin' your eyes on him, madam," said he softly, jerking his head towards the room where I had left Mr. Dabney.

I was vexed, of course, and I suppose my face showed it. My reproof was not so severe, however, as to cause such a look of cowering fear. Henry turned pale, his thin, loose lips seemed to find themselves unable to fit together properly. He stammered out an abject apology, and melted away in the hall.

I stood for several minutes staring after him, I remember, and when, turning, I found that Mr. Dabney had followed me to the door and was watching both me and the departing man, I was distinctly and unreasonably annoyed with him.

He, too, melted away into the room, and I went out to see Mary in the garden. Truly I never thought myself a particularly awe-inspiring person, but, since I had come to "The Pines," every one from Robbie to this young man, every one, that is, except Mary and Mrs. Brane, seemed to regard me with varying degrees of fear. It distressed me, but, at the same time, gave me a new feeling of power, and I believe it was a support to me in the difficult and terrifying days to come.

At the box hedge of the garden, Mary met me. As usual, she kept me at a distance from her charge.

"Miss Gale," she said, "may I speak to you for a minute?"

"For as many minutes as you like," I said cordially.

She moved to a little arbor near by where there was a rustic seat. I sat down upon it, and she stood before me, her strong, red hands folded on her apron. I saw that she was grave and anxious, though as steady As ever.

"Miss Gale,'t is a queer matter," she began.

My heart gave a sad jump. "Oh, Mary," I begged her, "don't say anything, please, about ghosts or weird presences in the house."

She tried to smile, but it was a half-hearted attempt.

"Miss Gale," she said, "you know I aren't the one to make mountains out of mole-hills, and you know I ain't easy scairt. But, miss, for Robbie's sake, somethin' must be done."

"What must be done, Mary?"

"Well, miss, I don't say as it mayn't be nerves; nerves is mysterious things as well I know, havin' lived in a haunted house in the old country where chains was dragged up and down the front stairs regular after dark, and such-like doin's which all of us took as a matter of course, but which was explained to the help when they was engaged. But I do think that Mrs. Brane had ought to move Robbie out of that wing. Yes'm, that I do."

"Has anything more happened?" I asked blankly.

"Yes'm. That is to say, Robbie's nightmares has been gettin' worse than ever, and, last night, when I run into the nursery, jumpin' out of my bed as quick as I could and not even stoppin' for my slippers—you know, miss, I sleep right next to the nursery, and keeps a night light burnin', for I'm not one of the people that holds to discipline and lets a nervous child cry hisself into fits—when I come in I seen the nursery door close, and just a bit of a gown of some sort whiskin' round the edge. Robbie was most beside hisself, I did n't hardly dare to leave him, but I run to the door and I flung it wide open sudden, the way a body does when they're scairt-like but means to do the right thing, and, in course, the hall was dark, but miss,"—Mary swallowed,—"I heard a footstep far down the passage in the direction of your room."

My blood chilled all along my veins. "In the direction of my room?"

"Yes, miss, so much so that I thought it must'a' been you, and I felt a bit easier like, but when I come back to Robbie—" here she turned her troubled eyes from my face—"why, he was yellin' and screamin' again about that woman with red hair.... Oh, Miss Gale, ma'am, don't you be angry with me. You know I'm your friend, but, miss, did you ever walk in your sleep?"

"No, Mary, no," I said, and, to my surprise, I had no more of a voice than a whisper to say it in.

After a pause, "You must lock me in at night after this, Mary," I added more firmly.

"Or, better still, after Robbie is sound asleep, let me come into your bedroom. You can make me up some sort of a bed there, and we will keep watch over Robbie. I am sure it is just a dream of his—the woman with red hair bending over him—and I am sure, too, that the closing door, and the gown, and the footstep were the result of a nervous and excited imagination. You had been waked suddenly out of a sound sleep."

"I was broad awake, ma'am," said Mary, in the voice of one who would like to be convinced.

I sat there cold in the warm sun, thinking of that woman with long, red hair who visited Robbie. That it might be myself, prompted by some ghoulish influence of sleep and night, made my very heart sick.

"Mary," I asked pitifully enough, "didn't Robbie ever see the woman with red hair before I came to 'The Pines'?"

Unwillingly she shook her head. "No, miss. The first time he woke up screamin' about her was the night before Delia and Jane and Annie gave notice."

"But he was afraid of red-haired women before, Mary, because, as soon as I took off my hat downstairs in the drawing-room the afternoon I arrived, he pointed at me and cried, 'It's her hair!'"

"Is that so, miss?" said Mary, much impressed. "Well, that does point to his havin' been scairt by some red-haired person before you come here."

"Surely Robbie could tell you something that would explain the whole thing," I said irritably. "Haven't you questioned him?"

Mary flung up her hands. "Have n't I? As long as I dared, Miss Gale, it's as much as his life is worth. Dr. Haverstock has forbidden it absolutely."

"That's strange, I think, for I know that the first way to be rid of some nervous terror is to confess its cause."

"Yes, miss." Mary was evidently impressed by my knowledge. "And that's just what Dr. Haverstock said hisself. But he