"But you will make it yours, won't you? You see, I've always dreamed of adventures, but since I met your aunt in the Asolando they've been coming a little too fast. There's that ghost business. Now I 'm going to catch that ghost to-night, if it's the last thing I do!" "Well, I'm not the ghost, and neither is my father, if that's what's in your mind. Tell me just what you have seen and heard." I gave her the story in detail, and my recital seemed to amuse her greatly. "You thought it was Aunt Octavia herself at first, then you thought I was the spook, and now you are not fully persuaded that it is not my father. I will take you into my confidence this far--that I don't know how father got into the house last night. He wrote a note asking me to meet him on the roof and bring the foils. That was not unlike him, as he is the dearest father in the world, and his whims are just as jolly in their way as Aunt Octavia's. I was sure that Aunt Octavia had retired for the night, so I changed my dress and carried the foils up through the trunk-room. I had hardly reached there before my father appeared. The whole situation--my being there and all that--has distressed father a great deal; so I let you see me cry a little. I promise never to do it again." Mirth brightened the eyes she turned upon me now. "You think," she asked, "that those lights could n't have winked out twice by themselves while you were on the stairway." "I am positive of it. And somebody--a being of some sort--passed me on the stairway. It might imaginably have been you!" "But I tell you positively it was not." "Then it might have been your father. A man who can enter a house at will might easily play any manner of other tricks. His disappearance after I had gone down into the house with him was just as mysterious as the ghost." "It was natural for father not to want you to know how he got in; the motive for that would be the fact that he is not supposed to see me or communicate with me in any way. But you 've got to get a ghost-_motif_." "I think I have one," I said. "Then all the rest is easy. To whom does this ghost-_motif_ lead you?" "I need hardly say; for it must have occurred to you that there is one member of the Hollister family we have n't mentioned in this connection." "If you mean Hezekiah"-- "None other!" The surprise in her face was not feigned,--I was confident of this,--and the questions evoked by my answer at once danced in her eyes. "If Hezekiah should be caught in the house just now we should all pay dearly for her rashness. Believe me, this is true. Some day you may know the whys and wherefores; at present no one may know. There is this, however,--if Hezekiah or my father should be found at Hopefield Manor, anywhere on the premises, while I am there, the consequences would be disastrous,--more so than I dare tell you. But why should Hezekiah wish to prowl about there at night,--to assume for a moment that she is doing it?"