But this seemed to irritate her indescribably. “No, no,” she cried, shaking her head and almost stamping her little foot. “I don’t believe it and I won’t have it!” Then, as if startled by her own vehemence, she blushed and dragged him away toward the door. “He may have been handsome, but I have not eyes like his, I am sure. If I could only see how my mother looked.” In the hall below they paused. There was much to be said concerning the contemplated alterations to be made in the house, but she did not seem to take any interest in the matter. Evidently the effect of her visit upstairs had not entirely left her, for just as they were turning toward the door she gave an involuntary look behind her, and laughing, to show her sense of the foolishness of her own words, she cried: “So we did not meet my father’s ghost after all. Well now, I may be sure that his interest is in other scenes and that he will never come back here.” As she spoke a shadow crossed the open doorway. “Do not be too sure of anything!” interposed a voice, and a strange but by no means attractive looking man stepped calmly into the house and paused with a low bow before her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IX. ASK DR. IZARD. POLLY uttered a sharp cry and stared at the intruder blankly. He was tall and military looking and had a smooth, well-shaven face. But his clothes were in rags and his features, worn by illness and coarsened by dissipation were of a type to cause a young girl like her to recoil. “Who is this man?” she cried at last, “and what is he doing here?” “It is the new hermit! The man who has taken up with Hadley’s old quarters,” exclaimed one of the neighbors from the group about Polly. “I saw him yesterday in the graveyard.” “Yes, and there is his dog, Piper. He follows every old tramp who comes into town. Don’t you remember how he tagged at the heels of that old beggar with a long beard, who went through here a month ago?” “This fellow looks as if he were strong enough to work,” whispered one of the women. “I shan’t give any of my stale victuals to a man with an arm strong enough to fell an ox,” murmured another. Here Clarke, who had only waited for an opportunity to speak, now advanced to the man standing in the doorway. As he did so he noticed that the wayfarer’s attention was not fixed upon the persons before him, but upon the walls and passages of the house they were in. “Have you come here begging?” he inquired. “If so you have made a mistake; this is a disused house which we have been opening for the first time in years.”