In the cold, musty air the girl felt choked. With quick, steady fingers she lit her candle; to stay in this room with no light but the moon’s was beyond her. As the lighted wick burned from blue into yellow, she sighed with relief. “I--to be frightened by Thomas’ silly stories!” she thought contemptuously. “If I had heard nothing about the room I should never have thought of having cold chills down my back.” With the thought she had set the candle on the side of the old spinet that was supposed to sound from the touch of fingers that had long been mold. It was silent enough now. Not a sound came from it as she opened the back and peered into the depths of the case where the strings were stretched like a piano’s. She put her slim, long arm down inside it, and felt the instrument all over. It was a plain, old-fashioned thing enough, strong and good still. But it apparently held no trace of any mechanism that would make it play alone at night. Ismay drew back and stared at it. In the fantastic mingling of moonlight and candle-light her uncanny beauty was more witchlike than ever, with the flaxen hair falling to her knees over the dark wrapper. “I should say Thomas was crazy if I had not heard the thing myself!” she said aloud, and there was nothing but puzzled curiosity in her voice. “But it’s got to be made to play again, and I don’t know the national air of the mice.” She put a stool carefully in front of the spinet, and sat down, fumbling at the keys. Clear, thin, and sweet, the notes tinkled softly under her fingers. “The tune--how did it go?” she tried for it softly. It had been a strange tune, with queer intervals; an air that was very old and wailing. She played a few bars, stumblingly. How cold, how very cold the room was, and what was the matter with the candle? Without a flicker the yellow flame had turned blue as she stared at it, it went out; she could see the wick smoking in the moonlight. “Truly,” said Ismay, to herself, “I must have iron nerves! I’m not frightened. Yet I don’t think that was a draft.” Without moving, she tried the strange tune again, and this time the very terror of death fell on her. Without turning her head, she knew there was something behind her; something very cold and threatening; something that in a minute would be at her throat, choking her till her hand fell from the keyboard. She swung sharply round. There was nothing there. “Thomas’ nonsense again, and my fancy,” she said deliberately, for the room was certainly empty. “My nerves are playing me tricks, after all.” As she started, in the darkness beyond the patch of moonlight she saw something, the picture of a woman hanging on the wall. “The late owner of the spinet!”