"It will be lovely to have that Children's-room memorial," said Miss Mather, softly, "with all the books and pictures and the little chairs. It was beautiful in Mrs. Vanderhoof, I think. It wasn't her fault. I wish--I wish we'd had a little chair in there for Jimmy." The librarian got up abruptly and moved around among the magazines, a mist before her eyes. Only now did she realise how she had grown to love him. THE MAID OF THE MILL I "The only objection I have to ghost stories," said young Sanford, "is from a literary point of view. They're so badly done, you know." "In what way?" said the clerk of the hotel, settling back in his office chair, and smiling at young Sanford and the circle of men who had come down for their keys from the billiard-room. "Well, in this way. I'm not considering the little harmless stories where the heroes are only frightened, or even those where their heads are grey in the morning. I'm thinking of those where they never live to tell the awful tale, you know; the ones in which they tell their friends to come if they call, and then they never call; the ones in which, although they scream and scream, nobody hears them. "And yet the old trembling man who points them to the haunted room knows perfectly well that five men have entered that room on five nineteenths of October, and never come out alive. Yet he only warns them, or at most only beseeches them not to go in. He has no police force--not that police could seriously harm the ghosts, but somehow they never appear to the police; he does not arrange with the victim's friend to burst in the door at twelve-thirty, anyhow, whether they are summoned or not; he doesn't--but then, what do any of them do that they might be expected to? And all this forced condition of things so that the ghost may have all the evening to work quietly in. Do you mean to tell me that if I were frightened to the extent of grey hair in the morning, I couldn't scream loud enough to be heard any distance?" This speech drew nods of approval from several of the men. "I've thought of that, too," said the clerk. In a dark corner behind the stove sat a man, hunched over his knees, silent, and apparently unknown to any of the others. At this point he looked up, cleared his throat, and said in a strange, husky voice: "Do you really suppose that that is anything else than nonsense?" Young Sanford flushed. "Sir"--he began. The other continued in his rough, thick voice: "Do you suppose they don't try to scream? Do you suppose they don't _think_ they're screaming?" A little silence of discomfort fell on the circle. There was something disagreeably suggestive in the question. Suddenly the man spoke again.