"Marjie," I said gently, "will you kiss me and tell me that you love me?" Her arms were about my neck a moment. Sometimes I can feel them there now. All shy and sweet she lifted her lips to mine. "I do love you, Phil," she murmured, and then of her own will, just once, she kissed me. "It is vouchsafed sometimes to know a bit of heaven here on earth," Le Claire had said to me when he talked of O'mie's father. It came to me that day; the cool, green valley by the river, the vine-covered old stone cabin, the sunlit draw opening to a limitless world of summer peace and beauty, and Marjie with me, while both of us were young and we loved each other. The lengthening shadows warned me at last. "Well, I must finish up this investigation business of Judge Baronet's," I declared. "Come, here's a haunted house waiting for us. Father says it hasn't been inhabited since the Frenchman left it. Are you afraid of ghosts?" We were going up a grass-grown way toward the little stone structure, half buried in climbing vines and wild shrubbery. "What a cunning place, Phil! It doesn't look quite deserted to me, somehow. No, I'm not afraid of anything but Indians." My arm was about her in a moment. She looked up laughing, but she did not put it away. "Why, there are no Indians here, Phil," and she looked out on the sunny draw. My face was toward the cabin. I was in a blissful waking dream, else I should have taken quicker note. For sure as I had eyes, I caught a flash of red between the far corner of the cabin and the thick underbrush beyond it. It was just a narrow space, where one might barely pass, between the corner of the little building and the surrounding shrubbery; but for an instant, a red blanket with a white centre flashed across this space, and was gone. So swift was its flight and so full was my mind of the joy of living, I could not be sure I had seen anything. It was just a twitch of the eyelid. What else could it be? We pushed open the solid oak door, and stood inside the little room. The two windows let in a soft green light. It was a rude structure of the early Territorial days, made for shelter and warmth. There was a dark little attic or loft overhead. A few pieces of furniture--a chair, a table, a stone hearth by the fireplace, and a sort of cupboard--these, with a strong, old worn chest, were all that the room held. Dust was everywhere, as might have been expected. And yet Marjie was right. The spirit of occupation was there. "Do you know, Marjie, this cabin has hardly been opened since the poor woman drowned herself in the river, down there. They found her body in the Deep Hole. The Frenchman left the place, and it has been called haunted. An Indian and a ghost can't live together. The race fears them of all things. So the Indians would never come here." "But look there, Phil!"--Marjie had not heeded my words--"there's a stick partly burned, and these ashes look fresh." She was bending over the big stone hearth.