"What'll we do?" asked Gyp again--Gyp, who was usually so resourceful. "If we only hadn't found that old letter we never'd have _thought_ of ghosts and we wouldn't have minded a bit being shut in the tower room." Jerry commenced to laugh nervously. "Gyp, maybe you don't _know_ you're sitting on the Bible!" Gyp sprang up. "I don't think it's anything to laugh about! Not me, I mean, but--but having to stay all night--up _there_!" Jerry started back up the stairway. "Come on," she encouraged. "_I'm_ not afraid. If there _are_ ghosts I want to see one." Gyp followed with the Bible. The tower room was shadowy in the fast-falling twilight. The girls tried to open each of the small windows; though they rattled busily enough they would not budge. Gyp sat down resignedly on the window-seat. "We'll just sit here until we're rescued. Only--no one will _guess_ where we are." "I think it's a grand adventure," declared Jerry valiantly. "If we only hadn't begun to _think_ about ghosts! You never can see them, anyway--you just feel them. Is that the wind? Sit close to me, Jerry." Jerry sat very close to her chum and they gripped hands; it was easier, that way, to endure the dreadful silence. "I'm hungry," whispered Gyp, after awhile. Then, a moment later, "Did you hear something, Jerry--like a long, long sigh?" Jerry nodded and Gyp drew closer to her, shivering. "Of course," she murmured in a voice lowered to the etiquette of a haunted room. "_You're_ not frightened because you didn't _know_ Uncle Peter. If I was afraid of him when he was _alive_ what----" "Sh-h-h!" commanded Jerry. Uncle Peter's ghost might be hovering very close to them and might hear! Gyp's words did not sound exactly respectful. Jerry tried to talk of everyday things but it was of no use--what mattered the color of Sue Knox's new sweater when the very air tingled with spirits? "_Oh-h!_" Gyp clutched Jerry in a spasm of fright. "_Something_ grabbed my elbow----" her voice was scarcely audible. "Jerry--_true_ as I live--cross my heart! Long--bony--fingers--just like Uncle Peter's used to feel--_Oh-h_!" CHAPTER XIX THE LETTER "I don't understand----" Mrs. Westley lifted anxious eyes from her soup-plate. "Gyp _always_ telephones! And _both_ of them----" "I saw Peggy Lee and Pat Everett coming home from the dressmaker's and she wasn't with them," offered Isobel. "But she's all right, mother." "Such dreadful things happen----" "I'd like to see anyone try to kidnap _Gyp_," laughed Graham. Then he added, in an off-hand way: "The ice broke on the lake out at Highacres to-day. Guess the skating's over." "Graham!" cried Mrs. Westley, springing to her feet so precipitously that her chair fell backward with a crash. Her face was deathly white. Graham, frightened by his careless remark, went to her quickly. "Mother--I didn't mean to frighten you! Why there's only one chance in a hundred the girls were on the ice. If they'd been skating _some_ of us would have seen them!"