I was really ripping mad at his taking French leave and so giving Silvia cause for her anxiety, but I forbore to reprimand him by word or tone, lest he get even by "coming back" literally. I did tell him how the loss of the note for twenty-four hours had caused a general excitement, but he felt no remorse for his share in the situation, blaming Diogenes entirely and bidding me "punch the kid's face" for unpinning the note. On my return from Windy Creek I was fortunate enough to fall in with a farmer who lived near the hotel. He was driving some sort of a machine he called an _autoo_. He was an old-timer in the vicinity and related the past, present, and pluperfect of all the residents on the route. I had a detailed and vivid account of the midnight visitor of the haunted house. "I'd jest naturally like to see what there is to it," he said. "Not that I am afeerd at all, only it's sort of spooky to go to a lonesome place like that all alone. If I could git some one to go with me, I'd tackle the job, but I vum if every time I perpose it to anyone they don't make some excuse." "I'm on," I declared. "I don't dread ghosts near as much as I do some living folks I know." "Right you air," chuckled the old man. "If you say so we'll go right off now jest as sure as shootin'. We may be ghosts ourselves tomorrow." I assured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a grass-grown lane. We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn't show up very clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that shook even my well-behaved nerves. From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us. My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed fleetly. "What's your rush?" I asked, when I had overtaken him. "I just happened to remember," he explained gaspingly, "that there's a pesky autoo thief in these 'ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last night." The lights on his machine must have reassured him as to its safety when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn't lessen his speed. We got in the "autoo" and soon said good-by to the lane. At one time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained the highway, right side up. "Well!" I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma, "that was some little old ghost,--beckoned to us to come right in, too!" "You seen it then!" he exclaimed excitedly. "I'm mighty glad I had an eyewitness. Folks wouldn't believe me." "They probably won't believe me, either," I assured him. "I am a lawyer."