"Vel, I don'd vas know so mooch apoud dot, vedder I vas or not," Fritz replied, with a doubtful grin. "Do I look silly?" "Oh! lordy! you are the silliest-looking goose I ever saw. I never saw a Yankee but what he was silly." "But I don'd vas be a Yankee!" "Get out! Don't dispute me! I know just who and what you are. You are Neptune, come up from the bottom of the sea." "You lie like dunder!" Fritz retorted, backing up, and beginning to get considerably alarmed, for he began to suspect that she was crazy. "I vasn't no Neptune at all--no von but Fritz Snyder. Id's a vonder you don'd call me Joner, vot swallered de valebone." "Nop! you're Neptune. Do you see the house up yonder?" "Vel, yes; vot off it?" "Oh! that's a high old roost. Ghosts and skeletons perch up there after dark and grin and rattle their bones at you. They don't do it to me, because I feed 'em snuff. Ha! ha! can you snuff the silly part of that outrageous gag? Say, boss, where you going, ef it ain't askin' too much?" "Vel, I don'd know dot myself." "Don't know where you're going?" "No; I vas huntin' vor somebody." "Oho! so am I! I was huntin' for some one, when I discovered something, and they called me silly because I refused to tell what. Well, good-day; swim over to England when you want to see me again." Then, with a peal of elfish laughter, she ran and sprung into the water, and swam around the base of the cliff out of sight. "I'll pet a half-dollar dot gal vas drunk or crazy, von or der odder, und der pest t'ing vor me to do is shlip avay vile I can!" Fritz ejaculated. To think was to act with him, and he accordingly set out clambering up the steep side of the bluff. In due time he reached the top and found a level spot of a couple of acres extent, in the center of which the house was situated, surrounded by sentinel rows of sighing hemlocks. A general aspect of desolation was perceptible on every hand, showing the premises to be untenanted. The garden was grown up with rank weeds and the house weather-worn and old, some of the shutters hanging by one hinge. It was a large structure of many queer gables, wings and projections, and fronted upon a road which had been used to communicate with some thoroughfare further inland. "Dot looks like ash uff it vas going to rain," Fritz muttered, gazing at an ominous bank of clouds that was gathering in the west. "I dink maybe I petter sday in der old house till morning, uff I und der ghosts can agree. I don'd vas much affraid off ghosts, anyhow." And he evidently was not, for he boldly entered the house by the creaking front-door and closed the door behind him. When the clouds had overspread the sky in an inky mass, and darkness had set in around the gloomy edifice, two black-whiskered men came along and stopped at the mansion. CHAPTER IV. THE GHASTLY RELIC. Meantime Fritz had been in the old rookery some time prior to the arrival of the bearded men.