"It _is_ a funny sound," she admitted, hastily finished the drying process and then slipping into her nightrobe, kimono, and bed slippers. All the time her ear seemed preternaturally attuned to that rising and waning sound without her chamber. It seemed to come toward the door, pass it, move lightly away, and then turn and repass again. It was a steady, regular---- _Step--put; step--put; step--put----_ And with it was the rustle of garments--or so it seemed. The girl grew momentarily more curious. The mystery of the strange sound certainly was puzzling. "Who ever heard of a ghost with a wooden leg?" she thought, chuckling softly to herself. "And that is what it sounds like. No wonder the servants call this corridor 'the ghost walk.' Well, me for bed!" She had already snapped out the electric light in the bathroom, and now hopped into bed, reaching up to pull the chain of the reading light as she did so. The top of one window was down half-way and the noise of the city at midnight reached her ear in a dull monotone. Back here at the rear of the great mansion, street sounds were faint. In the distance, to the eastward, was the roar of a passing elevated train. An automobile horn hooted raucously. But steadily, through all other sounds, as an accompaniment to them and to Helen Morrell's own thoughts, was the continuous rustle in the corridor outside her door: _Step--put; step--put; step--put._ CHAPTER X MORNING The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the Civil War, it had been one of the "great houses" in its day, to be pointed out to the mid-nineteenth century visitor to the metropolis. Of course, when the sightseeing coaches came in fashion they went up Fifth Avenue and passed by the stately mansions of the Victorian era, on Madison Avenue, without comment. Willets Starkweather had sprung from a quite mean and un-noted branch of the family, and had never, until middle life, expected to live in the Madison Avenue homestead. The important members of his clan were dead and gone and their great fortunes scattered. Willets Starkweather could barely keep up with the expenditures of his great household. There were never servants enough, and Mrs. Olstrom, the very capable housekeeper, who had served the present master's great-uncle before the day of the new generation, had hard work to satisfy the demands of those there were upon the means allowed her by Mr. Starkweather. There were rooms in the house--especially upon the topmost floor--into which even the servants seldom went. There were vacant rooms which never knew broom nor duster. The dwelling, indeed, was altogether too large for the needs of Mr. Starkweather and his three motherless daughters.