Cholo Sam brought up a steaming pot of coffee, his dark face expanded with delight. “Ah, Señor Hunt!” the Mexican said, “you an’ de Señor Hurley—you are de pure queel, eh? De boys all cheer you—my goodness, yes!” When Hunt was dressed again he went to Betty’s door and knocked. His sister’s response to his summons was brisk and cheerful, as usual. Yet, when he entered and looked keenly at her, he thought there was something feverish—or was it expectant?—in the look she gave him. The girls were both in the big bed, heaped with blankets. Nell’s petite face, ruffled about by one of Betty’s boudoir caps, was pale. Indeed, the parson’s sister looked in much the better condition of the two. The excitement and danger of the adventure which had befallen them seemed to have affected the girls in a paradoxical manner. Whereas the Eastern girl might be expected to be overcome by the affair and Nell have suffered the adventure as an ordinary experience, the result seemed really to be the other way around! Nell lay in the bed pale, almost hysterical it would seem. Betty could scarcely control her excitement. “Ford!” she exclaimed, “I need you. Try to convince this foolish girl that there is no such thing as a ghost—a real ghost.” Hunt smiled, but he could not be unsympathetic. He realized that Nell Blossom, being brought up as she had been—even associating so long with Mother Tubbs—was probably hopelessly superstitious. He could not find it in his heart to oppose roughly any fear Nell might hold regarding supernatural things. He tried to put his admonition in a kindly way. “If there is any truth at all in the matter of ghosts,” he said, “it must be of a somewhat unreal nature, must it not? Ghosts are supposed to be too ethereal for sight or touch or sound. And the only smell, even, accompanying their visitations, is supposed to be of brimstone, isn’t it?” “That feller ought to smell of brimstone all right!” muttered Nell suddenly hectic in her language. “He ought to come plumb from the bad place.” “What does she mean?” Hunt asked Betty. Yet he half suspected what was in the singer’s mind. “Did you girls see——” “Nell declares,” interrupted Betty, still with that strange excitement, “that she has seen the ghost of a man she calls Dick Beckworth.” “Dick Beckworth,” Hunt repeated calmly. “You saw him, I presume,” he watched the pale face on the pillow all the time, “on the side of the cliff over yonder? He rode down behind you——” “Do you mean——” gasped Nell. A flame of color flashed into both her cheeks. Her blue eyes grew round with surprise. “He says he came into town by that path,” the young man rejoined. “He put us on to the track of you girls. He said he saw you start down the path ahead of him.” “He is alive!” murmured Nell. “His horse was in bad shape, I believe,” Hunt told her. “But the last I knew—just before we left the Grub Stake to look for you—Dick Beckworth gave every promise of getting on quite well.”