The hood fell back, and in the dim starlight Captain Lennox could just make out the face of a woman, young and pale, her eyes cast pleadingly up to his own. "Oh, sir, don't hold me!--don't keep me!" was the answer, given in a tone of wailing entreaty, though the voice was one of singular sweetness. "Please let me go!" "What are you doing here?" he reiterated, still keeping his hold upon her. "What were you peeping at the house for?" "I am looking for Katherine," whispered the girl. "I come here often to look for her." "For Katherine!--and who is Katherine?" asked Captain Lennox. But the next moment he remembered the name, as being the one connected with that strange mystery that so puzzled Heron Dyke. "For my sister," softly repeated the girl. "I do no harm, sir, in coming here to look for her." "But, my good girl, she is not to be seen, you know; she never will be seen," he remonstrated, a shade of compassion in his tone. "But I do see her," answered the girl, her voice dropped to so low a pitch that he could scarcely hear it. "I have seen her once or twice, sir; at her own window." Perhaps Captain Lennox felt a little taken aback at the words. He did not answer. "People say she must be dead; I know that," went on the speaker, in the same hushed tone. "Even mother says that it must be Katherine's ghost I see. But I think it is herself, sir. I think she is somewhere inside Heron Dyke." If Captain Lennox felt a shade of something not agreeable creeping over him, he may be excused. The subject altogether bordered on the supernatural. "My poor girl, had you not better go home and go to bed?" he said, compassionately. "You can do no possible good by wandering about here at this time of night." "Oh, sir, I must wander; I must find out what has become of her," was the girl's pleading answer. "I can't rest night or day; mother knows I can't. When I go to sleep it is Katherine's voice that wakes me again." "But----" "Hark! what was that?" she suddenly cried out, laying her hand lightly, for protection, on the Captain's arm. And he started again, in spite of himself. "I heard nothing," he said, after listening a moment. "There it is again; a second scream. There were two screams, you know, sir--her screams--heard that snowy February night." "But, my good girl, there were no screams to be heard now. It is your imagination. The air is as still as death." Ere the words were well spoken, the girl was gone. She had vanished silently behind the thorn-trees. And Captain Lennox, after waiting a minute or two, and not feeling any the merrier for the encounter, pursued his walk across the park. Suddenly, however, as a thought struck him, he turned to look at the windows of the house. They lay in the shade, gloomy and grim, no living person, no light, to be seen in any one of them. "It is a curious fancy of hers, though," muttered the Captain to himself, as he wheeled round again and went on his way.