"I’ve been taken for many things in my life," he said, "but never for a ghost. I wonder if it would be nice to be that? We always think of it from the mortal point of view. We never ask if the ghost has a good time—and yet I don’t see why he shouldn’t. There might be sociable ghosts—now don’t you think so, Mrs. Kennaird?" She did not feel disposed to argue it. "They tell me the peasants have seen a great bird in the sky. Everyone up at Vermala is looking for it. Of course they will not find it. I am not a least bit superstitious, but I must say that the idea of a great bird pleases me—even if it’s untrue." "Then you are quite sure it is untrue, Mrs. Kennaird?" "Now, could it be anything else? You are not serious." He laughed a little nervously. "It would be a splendid thing to fly over the mountains, wouldn’t it? If I have a spirit, I would sooner it played about here than in an old vault, as most of them do. Why, how it suggests power—power above men, doesn’t it?" And then almost with an apology: "But I suppose you think all this is just nonsense? I’m not the kind of man who ought to be ambitious, am I? Everyone tells me that." "But you do not lose your ambition because of them?" He drew himself up—Benny could be a tower of dignity when he chose. "Yes," he said, with real earnestness, "I am ambitious, and some day I shall attain my goal." They walked a little way down the hillside in silence after that. There was no sign of Ian Kavanagh, who had taken a bad "toss" at the last of the bends above Andana and was trying to get the snow out of his hair at that very moment. Benny had a toboggan with him, but it was different from the others, much longer and made of steel. He trailed it behind him indifferently, thinking that his companion wished to walk down to the hotel; but when he discovered her own luge anchored in the snow he understood the situation. "Halloa!" he said, "a derelict." She told him with some shame that it was hers. "A case of bolting—I suppose it wanted the curb. And now I shall have to drag it back to the hotel." "Don’t do anything of the kind. We leave these things all over the place—the hotel sledges pick them up as far down as the Sanatorium sometimes. Just let it lie there. I’ll take you down if you like—there’s plenty of room for two, and—and—I should like it, Mrs. Kennaird; I should think it an honour." It was so simply said, the blunt words of a schoolboy speaking to the mature woman, that she forbore to smile. It would have been absurd, however, to respond in a similar vein, for the idea of a flirtation with Mr. Benjamin Benson was quite out of the question. So she accepted without any compliment at all. "It’s very good of you—and really I am beginning to feel the cold. Will you show me where to sit? I am absolutely ignorant, and it is so many years since I played games." He understood that.