"Ghosts," echoed Douglas, turning to his host. "Unless my memory is playing me false, this house used to be thought haunted. It seems to me I've heard tales of secret passages and mysterious noises." Thornton laughed outright. "That old legend was caused by flying squirrels getting in the wall through cracks in the eaves and chimneys. Sometimes on still nights I can hear them dropping nuts, which make a great noise as they fall from floor to floor. It's enough to scare a nervous person into fits." "You are very disappointing, Uncle Dana," objected Eleanor. "When Douglas--Mr. Hunter,"--catching herself up, but no one apparently noticed the slip, and she went on hurriedly--"spoke of spooks I had hopes of an ancestral ghost." "I always understood that this house was haunted, Dana," put in Mrs. Truxton. "Well, I believe we are supposed to possess a ghost--a very respectable, retiring one," added Thornton, as Cynthia's eyes, which were fixed upon him, grew to twice their usual size. "My great-aunt, Sophronia Thornton, was a maiden lady, a good deal of a Tartar, I imagine, from the dance she led my Great-grandfather Thornton, who was an easy-going, peaceable man. She ran the house for him until his marriage, and then ran his wife, and, according to tradition, she has run her descendants out of her room ever since." "Good gracious!" ejaculated Cynthia. "Do tell us all about her." "There is not so very much to recount." Thornton smiled at her eagerness. "The story goes, as I heard it first from my grandfather, that when he attempted to occupy her room, the southwest chamber, he was driven out." "How?" "He was very fond of reading in bed. As I said before, my great-aunt was very rigid and did not approve of late hours, which was one rock she and her brother split on. My grandfather, not having the lighting facilities of the present day, used to read in bed by placing a lighted candlestick on his chest, holding his book behind the candle so that its light fell full on the printed page. At eleven o'clock every night he would feel a slight puff of air and the candle would go out. He tried everything to stop it. He stuffed every crack and cranny through which a draft might be supposed to come, but it was of no use; his light was always extinguished at eleven o'clock." "Do you believe it?" asked Cynthia.