The girl from the ranch was too excited and curious to go to sleep now. She had to remain right by her door, opened on a crack, and learn what would happen next. For an hour at least she heard the steady stepping of the old lady. Then the crutch rapped out an accompaniment to her coming upstairs. She was humming softly to herself, too. Helen, crouched behind the door, distinguished the sweet, cracked voice humming a fragment of the old lullaby: "Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby----" Thus humming, and the crutch tapping--a mere whisper of sound--the old lady rustled by Helen's door, on into the long corridor, and disappeared through some door, which closed behind her and smothered all further sound. Helen went to bed; but she could not sleep--not at first. The mystery of the little old lady and her ghostly walk kept her eyes wide open and her brain afire for hours. She asked question after question into the dark of the night, and only imagination answered. Some of the answers were fairly reasonable; others were as impossible as the story of Jack the Giant Killer. Finally, however, Helen dropped asleep. She awoke at her usual hour--daybreak--and her eager mind began again asking questions about the mystery. She went down in her outdoor clothes for a morning walk, with the little old lady uppermost in her thoughts. As usual, Mr. Lawdor was on the lookout for her. The shaky old man loved to have her that few minutes in his room in the early morning. Although he always presided over the dinner, with Gregson under him, the old butler seldom seemed to speak, or be spoken to. Helen understood that, like Mrs. Olstrom, Lawdor was a relic of the late owner--Mr. Starkweather's great-uncle's--household. Cornelius Starkweather had been a bachelor. The mansion had descended to him from a member of the family who had been a family man. But that family had died young--wife and all--and the master had handed the old homestead over to Mr. Cornelius and had gone traveling himself--to die in a foreign land. Once Helen had heard Lawdor murmur something about "Mr. Cornelius" and she had picked up the remainder of her information from things she had heard Mr. Starkweather and the girls say. Now the old butler met her with an ingratiating smile and begged her to have something beside her customary coffee and roll. "I have a lovely steak, Miss. The butcher remembers me once in a while, and he knows I am fond of a bit of tender beef. My teeth are not what they were once, you know, Miss." "But why should I eat your nice steak?" demanded Helen, laughing at him. "My teeth are good for what the boys on the range call 'bootleg.' That's steak cut right next to the hoof!" "Ah, but, Miss! There is so much more than I could possibly eat," he urged.