"Oh, goody!" exclaimed 'Phemie, clasping her hands and almost dancing in delight. "Do you mean it's a really, truly haunted house?" Sairy Pritchett gazed at her with slack jaw and round eyes for a minute. Then she sniffed. "Wa-al!" she muttered. "I re'lly thought you was _bright_. But I see ye ain't got any too much sense, after all," and forthwith refused to say anything more to 'Phemie. But the younger Bray girl decided to say nothing about the supposed ghostly occupants of Hillcrest to her sister--for the present, at least. There was still half a mile of road to climb to Hillcrest, for the way was more winding than it had been below; and as the girls viewed the summit of the ridge behind Aunt Jane's old farm they saw that the heaped-up rocks were far more rugged than romantic, after all. "There's two hundred acres of it," Lucas observed, chirruping to the ponies. "But more'n a hundred is little more'n rocks. And even the timber growin' among 'em ain't wuth the cuttin'. Ye couldn't draw it out. There's firewood enough on the place, and a-plenty! But that's 'bout all--'nless ye wanted to cut fence rails, or posts." "What are those trees at one side, near the house?" queried Lyddy, interestedly. "The old orchard. _There's_ your nearest firewood. Ain't been much fruit there since I can remember. All run down." And, indeed, Hillcrest looked to be, as they approached it, a typical run-down farm. Tall, dry weed-stalks clashed a welcome to them from the fence corners as the ponies turned into the lane from the public road. The sun had drawn a veil of cloud across his face and the wind moaned in the gaunt branches of the beech trees that fringed the lane. The house was set upon a knoll, with a crumbling, roofed porch around the front and sides. There were trees, but they were not planted near enough to the house to break the view on every side but one of the sloping, green and brown mountainside, falling away in terraced fields, patches of forest, tablelands of rich, tillable soil, and bush-cluttered pastures, down into the shadowy valley, through which the river and the railroad wound. Behind Hillcrest, beyond the outbuildings, and across the narrow, poverty-stricken fields, were the battlements of rock, shutting out all view but that of the sky. Lonely it was, as Aunt Jane had declared; but to the youthful eyes of the Bray girls the outlook was beautiful beyond compare! "Our land jines this farm down yonder a piece," explained Lucas, drawing in the ponies beside the old house. "Ye ain't got nobody behind ye till ye git over the top of the ridge. Your line follers the road on this side, and on the other side of the road is Eben Brewster's stock farm of a thousand acres--mostly bush-parsture an' rocks, up this a-way." The girls were but momentarily interested in the outlook, however. It was the old house itself which their bright eyes scanned more particularly as they climbed down from the wagon.