"No, it wasn't," declared Landon. "Milly went to the girls as I went to you, Professor, and found them both asleep. Or at least they were dozing, but they were safely in their beds. You know we're all more or less wakeful at four A.M." "Four P.M. is a more fatal time," said Braye, musingly. "The whole thing is frightful. I'm for going back to New York, as soon as we can." "If this should be the eleventh case," began the Professor. "What do you mean, the eleventh case?" asked Tracy. "As I told these people before we started up here, Andrew Lang has said, in one of his books, that ten out of every eleven cases of so-called supernatural manifestations are produced by fraud. When I said that, Miss Carnforth very astutely said, that it was the eleventh case that was of interest to investigators. And I agreed. If this, now, is the eleventh case,--I don't mean only my experience of last night, but all our experiences up here,--if this is the eleventh case, that is _not_ the result of fraud, and it certainly looks like it, why, then, we have something worth investigating." "Not at the cost of any more lives," said Braye, sternly. "If it is the eleventh case, and if it is going right on being an eleventh case, I've had enough of it! Perhaps that apparition of a glass in the spectre's hand, foretells tragedy to you, Professor." Braye spoke gloomily, rather than as an alarmist, but the Professor turned white. "I've thought of that," he said, in a low voice. "That's why I want to be sure the phantom was a real one. If it was fraud, I have no fear, but if it was really the disembodied spirit of that shawled woman, appearing in her own materialized skeleton,--I, too, have had about enough investigating!" "What do you think, Norma?" Braye asked of the girl, as, later in the afternoon, they were walking round along the wild path that was the only approach to the great portals of Black Aspens. "I don't know, Rudolph, but I'm beginning to think there _is_ a human hand and brain back of it all. I'm a sensitive, and that's one reason why these things _don't_ appeal to me as supernatural. I've had more or less experience with supernormal matters and I've never known anything like the things that have happened and are happening up here." "Whom do you suspect, Norma? Tell me, for I, too, think there may be some trickery, and I wonder if we look in the same direction." "I don't want even to hint it, Rudolph, but----" "Don't hesitate to tell me, dear. Oh, that slipped out! I've no right to say 'dear' to you, but,--Norma, after we get back to town, after these horrors are farther in the past, mayn't I tell you then,--what I hope you will be glad to hear?" "Don't--don't say such things," and a pained look came into the blue eyes. "You know you are not free to talk like that!" "Not free? Why am I not? What do you mean?" "You know, you must know. Eve told me----"