One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck. But the odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much mine for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to me. Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a sort of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong. But the house was still asleep--closed shutters or down-drawn blind at every window. I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion, with a high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it was mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty. The sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings of white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and terminating in oval shields of the same material, on which had originally been carved the initials of the builder and the date of erection; but the summer's sun and the winter's rain of many a long year had rubbed both letters and figures carefully out. Long afterwards I knew that Dupley Walls had been built in the reign of the Third William by a certain Squire Pollexfen of that date, "out of my own head," as he himself put it in a quaint document still preserved among the family archives; and rather a muddled head it must have been in matters architectural. After this, I ventured round by the main entrance, with its gravelled carriage sweep, to the other side of the house, where I found a long flagged terrace bordered with large evergreens in tubs placed at frequent intervals. On to this terrace several French windows opened--the windows, as I found later in the day, of Lady Pollexfen's private rooms. To the left of this terrace stood a plantation of young trees, through which a winding path that opened by a wicket into the private grounds, invited me to penetrate. Through the green gloom I advanced bravely, my heart beating with all the pleasure of one who was exploring some unknown land. I saw no living thing by the way, save two grey rabbits that scuttered across my path and vanished in the undergrowth on the other side. Pretty frisky creatures! how I should like to have caught them, and fed them, and made pets of them as long as they lived! Two or three hundred yards farther on the path ended with another wicket, now locked, which opened into the high road. About a mile away I could discern the roofs and chimneys of a little town. When I got back to the hall I found dear old Dance getting rather anxious at my long absence, but she brightened into smiles when I kissed her and told her where I had been. "You must have slept well, or you would hardly look so rosy this morning," she said, as we sat down to breakfast. "I should have slept very well if I had not been troubled by the ghosts." "Ghosts! my dear Miss Janet? You do not mean to say----" and the old lady's cheek paled suddenly, and her cup rattled in her saucer as she held it.