They were very quiet and docile now and continued so all the way home, and although there were several hills to go up and down they neither flinched nor stopped. Virginia, who was the ruling spirit, would put her head over against Paul’s neck when the hill was steeper than usual, and with a little neigh seemed coaxing him to good behavior; then, squaring her shoulders for the effort, plunged up the ascent at a pace which showed she at least had no heart trouble. Mark took the party round one of the ponds and into the village the opposite way from which they had left it. The road was past the Dalton House which caught Alice’s attention at once. The windows had nearly all been broken and the setting sun poured a flood of light through them into the empty rooms. A mass of woodbine had climbed up one of the gables to the top of the chimney, around which it had twined itself with graceful curves, and on one of its branches, which swayed in the wind, a robin was singing his evening song. “Look, Helen, what a picturesque old ruin. It must have a history,” Alice said. Before Helen could reply Mark rejoined, “That is the haunted house. You’ll hear enough about it if you stay here long. It has something to do with _me_.” Helen was interested at once and asked that the horses be stopped while she looked at the ruin. “The advertisement mamma saw had in it something about a haunted house, put in to attract attention, I suppose. Is this it, and is it really haunted, and what had you to do with it? Was somebody killed here? How dreadful! I dote on haunted houses,” she said flippantly. For a minute Mark made no reply; then he answered in a tone she had never heard before, “My great-grandfather was killed here, and the credulous people say his wife comes back to visit the scene of the tragedy.” “Poor thing! Where is she now?” Helen asked at random. Mark laughed and thought of the withered rose in his pocket book and the grave from which he picked it; then he said, “Hard telling where she is. She has been dead nearly a hundred years.” “How sad; died of a broken heart, I suppose,” was Helen’s next remark. Craig moved uneasily, wondering what Mark would reply, and wholly unprepared for his quick answer, “Died of a broken neck! She was hung!” Helen gave a little screech and fell back against the cushioned seat, while Alice turned pale with wonder and surprise. “That’s my pedigree,—my heredity,” Mark went on, with a certain defiance in his voice. “Mr. Taylor will tell you all about it, if you ask him. It is his crack story; but remember I had nothing to do with it.” He turned and looked at Helen, who met his look with tears in her eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said, very softly, and the words and the tears compensated for the shame Mark had felt when he avowed his ancestry. “I am glad I was the first to tell it,” he thought, as he told the horses to go on.