“Aye, and it is gloomy.”

Startled, the girls looked around for the voice, then realized that it was their driver who had spoken. He had been silent all the way from the station, and they had all but forgotten him.

“What made you say that?” asked Billie, rather wonderingly. For although the man had only repeated her own words, the tone in which he said them made them appear twice as ominous.

“It’s a gloomy place,” he said once more, with a shake of his head. “Aye, and there be some folks around here as says it is haunted.”

“Do-do they really think so?” stammered Violet Farrington, beginning to wish herself back in North Bend.

“Aye, they think so,” he answered, in the same monotonous voice. “And there be some times that I don’t blame ’em for what they thinks.”

“Do you think it’s haunted?” asked Billie, with the hint of a laugh in her voice. Even here, in this forsaken place, with dusk coming on and the prospect of spending a night in a house people called haunted, Billie’s sense of humor did not altogether leave her. “Do you?” she repeated, the laughter still more marked in her voice.

The driver twisted around in his seat to see her before he answered.

“It’s all very well for you to laugh now,” he answered. “But maybe you won’t feel so much like laughin’ in the morning.”

In spite of herself, Billie shivered a little, and the other girls looked frightened.

“If I was you,” the driver went on with his unasked advice, “I’d turn right back an’ spend the night in Roland. There’s a boardin’ house-”

“Nonsense, we’re not going to turn back,” spoke up Mrs. Gilligan, a trifle sharply, for she could see that the driver’s evil prophecies were getting on the girls’ nerves. “If there are any ghosts in that house-which of course there ain’t-they’d just better show their faces around me, that’s all. I’ll give ’em such a taste of my rolling pin that they’ll get discouraged for good and all.”

She nodded her head vigorously, and the girls laughed.

“All right, all right,” grumbled the driver, disgruntled at having his ideas treated in this highhanded manner. “You can laugh all you’re wanting to. But I tell you, if it was me-”

“Which it isn’t,” Mrs. Gilligan interrupted shortly.

“I wouldn’t stay in that there haunted place for a farm, I wouldn’t.”

“What makes you think it’s haunted?” Laura persisted, for, of the three girls, Laura was by far the most curious. “Do people see lights and hear funny noises and such things?”

“Laura-” began Violet in protest.

“Why no, Miss,” said the driver reluctantly. “I don’t know as they actually seen things, but they has heard queer noises. There was some boys once,” he went on, warming to his task of story teller, “as thought they’d have some fun. You know the old lady what owned the place was nearly allus away and just left it to a caretaker that didn’t take over much care of it-” He stopped to chuckle, and the girls leaned forward eagerly.

“What about them?” asked Billie impatiently.

“Well, they thought as they’d play burglar an’ break into the place an’ make a regular lark of it.”

“Weren’t they afraid they’d get caught?” asked Laura.

“Not with Sheriff Higgins on the job,” chuckled the driver, in high good humor now that he was getting off his favorite yarn. They were nearing the house and the girls hurried him on impatiently.

“Well, they heard such funny humming noises and jingling like the rattling of chains an’ things,” said the driver, “that they got most scared to death and ran back home like the old Nick was after them. Ever since then folks has said the place was haunted.”

“Stuff and rubbish!” said Mrs. Gilligan, as the team came to a stop before the house. “A nice lot o’ talk I call that to fill the girls up with. Rattlin’ of chains and hummin’ noises! Huh!” And with her nose in the air to show her contempt of all such notions she swept out of the carriage.

The girls followed, and ran back to the wagon that contained their luggage and some provisions. The boy who had been driving this wagon was already unloading it, and the old fellow who had told them such gloomy tales came hobbling back to lend a hand.

Billie fished in her pocketbook for the key to the house which was supposed to be haunted, and, finding it, held it up with a hand that was not quite steady.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to do it, I suppose.”

“Wh-who’s going first?” asked Violet, regarding the gloomy bulk of the rambling old house, now half hidden in the dusk, with troubled eyes.

“I am, of course,” said Billie stoutly, adding with a gay little laugh: “I guess it’s my right, isn’t it? Why, this is my house-the first I’ve ever owned!”

“And welcome you be to it,” murmured the old man, to be promptly cowed by a withering look from Mrs. Gilligan.

“Come on,” cried Billie again. “I’ll go first, but you’ll have to promise to follow me in.”

“Why, of course we’ll follow you in,” said Violet, loyal through all her fear. “You don’t suppose we’d let you go into that awful place alone, do you?”

“Well, I like that!” cried Billie, leading the way up the stone-paved walk. “Calling my beautiful old homestead an awful place.”

“Yes, I’m surprised at you, Vi,” added Laura, as she followed close at Billie’s heels. “Don’t you know you should have some tact? Even if it is awful, you shouldn’t talk about it-”

Billie stopped and stared indignantly.

“If you say another word,” she threatened, “I’ll make you go first.”

The threat had the desired effect, and both Violet and Laura protested that it was the most beautiful place on the face of the earth, or words to that effect.

“You’d better be giving the key to me,” said Mrs. Gilligan. “We can’t stand out here talkin’ all night. Besides, the door probably has an old-fashioned lock on it, and they ain’t a lock anywhere that can fool me.”

Billie meekly handed over the key, and Mrs. Gilligan marched majestically before them up to the front door. She bent down to examine the lock, then fitted the key into it.

With a groaning and squeaking of rusty hinges, the heavy door swung inward, and the girls found themselves staring into a black well of hallway that seemed to have no windows anywhere.

“Gracious! did anybody think to bring matches?” asked Laura in an awed whisper.

“Sure and I did,” Mrs. Gilligan’s matter-of-fact voice reassured her. “Five whole boxes I brought. But I’ve got something even better than that for the present occasion.”

She drew from the pocket of her coat a small electric torch and flashed it into the interior of the house. The bright light showed them glimpses of queer chairs standing about in odd corners and finally lighted up a broad stairway.

“It’s the hall,” announced Mrs. Gilligan. “Now forward march, and we’ll soon find out where the lights are.”

“There must be a push button somewhere,” suggested Violet, and even in their present nervous state the other girls laughed at her.

“A push button!” cried Laura. “Do you expect to find electric lights out in this wilderness?”

“We’re lucky if we find a chandelier somewhere,” added Billie. “I hope we don’t have to burn candles or lamps. They aren’t just exactly what you might call cheerful.”

“And something cheerful is what we need,” added Laura ruefully.

“Well, if you’re after acetylene gas I guess you’ll be disappointed,” said Mrs. Gilligan as her torch lighted up a wonderful old-fashioned richly carved candelabrum containing a dozen candles, half burned and looking rather wilted. “It’s candles we’ll be burning while we’re here.”

The girls groaned.

“But they give such a ghostly, flickering light,” protested Violet, as if it were in some way Mrs. Gilligan’s fault. “I know I’ll never be able to stand it,” and she glanced nervously over her shoulder.

“Well, could you stand the dark any better?” asked Mrs. Gilligan practically, as she began to light the candles one after another. “There will probably be other candelabra in the house, and if you get enough of them burning there’s nothing in this world that is prettier. For myself I just love candle light.”

“Yes, when you’re in civilization,” put in Laura. “But not out here.”

“I’ve found another one!” cried Billie, who had been prospecting on her own account. “And here’s another! Why we’ll have a big illumination before we’re through.”

“That’s the way to talk,” said Mrs. Gilligan approvingly, as she crossed over to Billie’s side of the large hall and began to light the other candles. “If we just make the best of everything and make up our minds to have a good time, we’ll have a good time. And if we don’t we might just as well take the driver’s advice and go home again.”

“Go home? Well I should just say not!” cried Laura. “The very idea of such a thing! The boys would tease the life out of us. We’d never hear the end of it.”

“Well then, we’re going to have a good time,” Mrs. Gilligan decided, adding, as she turned toward the door: “Where have those men gone? I told them to bring in the things.”

She went out to see about it with the girls at her heels and found the old man and the boy in a heated argument over something.

“Well, if you want to go into that there haunted house, it’s your concern,” the old man was saying in a querulous voice. “As for me, I wouldn’t step a foot inside of it, no sir, not if you was to give me a farm!”