"Is the monk supposed to have a predilection for any particular chamber?" asked Meredith. "Ghosts are uncertain visitors, I know; but it would be something to pass a night where one might be expected." "You might find it no jest if he came," said Laurence. "Oh, I should take him seriously enough. In fact, I have something of Miss Verschoyle's feeling. There are so many questions one would like to ask." She was glancing curiously towards her brother. "Why did he take that tone--he that, until now, had been as ready as the rest to jest at the ghost?" But she had no time to speculate as to what was in his mind. Now that he had returned, she might consider herself off duty in the matter of doing her share towards entertaining; and she had to help Sally to prepare a room for the guest, her invalid mother to attend to, and to contrive a fitting breakfast for the morrow. The two young men passed out on to the grass terrace before the window, lighted their cigars, and strolled to and fro in the moonlight. There was very little interchange of thought. Allan Meredith was speculating as to how best he could set about helping Margaret Verschoyle's brother; and beginning to fear it would be very difficult to do so, unless he were more inclined than he now appeared to put his shoulder to the wheel. He had little sympathy for a nature such as Verschoyle's; and, unconsciously perhaps to himself, the few words he uttered conveyed what was in his mind to the other, who was quick to resent it. [Illustration: "TO AND FRO IN THE MOONLIGHT."] "Put me in the way of earning money, indeed! No use asking him for a loan; he would be putting all sorts of awkward questions," thought Verschoyle, with the uneasy consciousness that he would find it difficult to explain without incriminating himself. "No, I won't try it! It must be the other way--there's no help for it now. Once out of this hole, I'll put my shoulder to the wheel, and pay him back with the first money I earn. He isn't likely to want the money if I took all instead of a quarter, and I won't take a penny more than that. It will only be a loan after all, which, if he were like anyone else, I could openly ask him for. Yes, I'll do it! If he sees through the trick, it will be easy to say it was only a jest done to try him. But I think I can manage it so quietly that he won't wake, and then I am safe." On re-entering the room they had quitted--the only habitable sitting-room the Priory could now boast--they found it untenanted, the mother and daughter having retired for the night. The two men sat in desultory conversation, maintained with some effort, until, in reply to a question from Laurence, Meredith admitted that he had had a long day and was inclined for bed. They went up together, and Laurence showed the other into a large, barely-furnished, and somewhat desolate-looking room, with two doors and one high, narrow, iron-barred window. "Sorry we have no better quarters to offer you, Meredith."