The fresh green lettuce heads had grown huge and compact like gigantic roses and filled, heaping full, the big basket he had set beside her. She went on thinning them out, pulling chance weeds, clipping the long stalks, determined to make no move until the unapproachable Michael suggested it. She thought much of David as she worked there in the dusk. Had he done well or had chance gone against him? Would he come soon to report how things were or would his return be so late that she would have to wait until morning to hear how he had fared? With a little good luck he should have got through famously but, somehow, good luck had not lately seemed to be the order of the day. “I am beginning to be just like Michael,” she reproved herself severely when she reached this point in her meditations. It was fortunate that she did not speak aloud for there was the old gardener himself, just behind her. She thought that he had come to bid her stop working but, instead, he stood leaning on his hoe, saying nothing. But he was there with something to say, that was evident, for presently, having shifted his feet once or twice and cleared his throat, he was able to begin. “Miss Betsey,” he said slowly, “you don’t believe in bad spirits, do you, the kind that bring ill luck to people that deserve only the best and fairest fortune on earth?” She was quite startled that his thoughts and hers should have been following so closely the same channel, but she would not admit the fact. “No, Michael, I don’t,” she answered firmly. “Do you?” “I’m not sure that I don’t, nor yet that I do,” he replied doubtfully; “sometimes I think I have let my fancies run away with me my whole life through, so now that I am a foolish old man, I cannot believe my own senses. You don’t think for instance—” he lowered his voice almost to a whisper and looked at her keenly through the shadows, “you don’t think that there is anything queer amiss up yonder at the old house?” “Michael!” cried Betsy, too much astonished to keep up her pretense of calmness. “Michael, have you noticed it too? What was it you saw?” “It was not so much what I saw, for my eyes are dim and old now, it was what I heard. On the very night when Mr. Donald was here and Mr. Reynolds was stricken, that was when I heard. Something moving in the dark, something that muttered to Itself, that stood by the pool for a minute there in the black and white of the moonlight. I heard the water splash like a fish jumping, but I am thinking it was more like a charm for bad luck being dropped in, as such Creatures love to do. I used to think that the bad spell was only on the old house but it is on the water now also, on that pool that lies so deep and quiet and pictures back the stars. If it was running water, now, the spell would carry away, but not with a still basin as that is, the evil lies there so quiet and works and works—” “Michael,” cried Betsey, “you should not believe such things!” He shook his head.