Lithway hesitated. “I suppose the uncertainty----” “Uncertainty! If there’s anything less dreadful than an imaginary snake that has struck, it is an imaginary snake that hasn’t struck. What has got into Wender?” “Fear, apparently,” said Lithway shortly. “He won’t come back. Says a real rattlesnake probably wouldn’t get into a house in Braythe more than once, but an unreal rattlesnake might get in any day. I don’t blame him.” “May I ask,” I said blandly, “if you are so far gone that you think rattlesnakes have ghosts?” Lithway lost his temper. “If you want to jeer at the thing, for God’s sake have the manners not to do it in this house! I tell you we have all three seen ghosts.” “The ghost of a rattlesnake,” I murmured to myself. “It beats everything!” And I looked once more into the mirror. The scar that the knife had made was still perceptible, but very faint. “Did you hunt the house over for the snake?” “Of course we did.” “Did you find it?” “Of course we didn’t--any more than we found your Zulu.” “Then why did you insist so on hunting the Zulu?” Lithway colored a little. “Well, to tell the truth, I never wholly believed in that snake. If you or Wender had only seen _her_, now!” “I don’t see why Wender was so worried,” I said. “After all, a snake might have got in--and got out.” “He saw it twice,” explained Lithway. “Symptoms,” I murmured. “Had he ever had an adventure with a rattlesnake?” “No.” “Then why should it make him nervous?” “I suppose”--Lithway looked at me a little cautiously, I thought--“just because he never _had_ seen one. He said, I remember, that that rattlesnake hadn’t been born yet.” I laughed. “Wender _is_ sensitive. The ghost of a rattlesnake that has never lived--well, you can’t be more fantastic than that!” “Wender has a theory,” Lithway said. But he seemed actually to want to change the subject. Accordingly, I did change it--a little. I didn’t really care for Wender’s theories. I had heard some of them. They included elementals. “Tell me some more about yours. She’s the most convincing of the three. Do you recognize her?” “Never saw any one that looked remotely like her.” “And you are the first occupant of this house,” I mused. “Was she dressed in an old-fashioned way?” Lithway actually blushed. “She is dressed rather oddly--her hair is done queerly. I’ve hunted the fashion-books through, and I can’t find such a fashion anywhere in the last century. I’m not in the least afraid, but I am curious about her, I admit.” “Was Wender’s rattlesnake old-fashioned?” Lithway got up. “See here,” he said, “I’m not going to stand jollying. That’s the one thing I _am_ afraid of. Should you like to hear Wender’s theory?”