Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick. Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead. No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes, marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but ’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the office; here ’tis.” He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw it on that November day, was not at all to her taste. “Now, let’s go to the ruin and the grave,” she said to Roy, who shrugged his shoulders, thinking he was bound on a rather gruesome business. “I shall have to ask the way to both places, as I believe they lie in different directions,” he said, and turning to Mr. Taylor he began to make inquiries as to the best way of reaching the Dalton ruin and the cemetery and where to find ’Tina’s grave. “Want to see that suller?” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed. “Why, all the timbers has fell in and there’s nothin’ left but a hole. I wonder it hain’t been sold afore now, though nobody wants it, there’s so much stuff told to this day about the ghost. They say she carries a candle now. In my opinion she’s enough to do repentin’, without spookin’ round where she used to live. I beg your pardon, Miss Hilton. I forgot I was speakin’ of your grandmarm, who lived more than a hundred years before you,” he said to Fanny, who was pale to her lips. She knew he meant no harm and tried to smile, but it was a pitiful kind of smile, which made Roy’s heart ache for her. “Poor little Fan,” he said, when they were out in the street. “This is a hard day for you. Hadn’t you better give up the ruin?”