Alone in his room the second night after his rencontre with the ghost, Bertram Chesleigh walked up and down restlessly, half mad with himself that he should dwell so persistently on that one thought, yet finding it so dangerously sweet he would not willingly have forgotten it. It seemed to him that he had never really lived till now, when this romantic passion for the beautiful unknown fired his heart. Elinor and Clare had been very much frightened at the appearance of the family ghost. They talked about it in low, awe-struck whispers. When Bertram Chesleigh expressed a desire to visit the haunted suite of rooms they expressed themselves as horrified, and declared that the rooms of the hapless Erma had been walled up long years before, and that all the rooms of the western wing were in such a ruinous condition that it was exceedingly dangerous to venture there at all. They declared that their father had engaged workmen to pull down the western wing on account of its precarious condition. But singularly enough Bertram Chesleigh's thoughts were running on the haunted rooms almost continuously to-night. Everything connected with the Glenalvan ghost had a deep interest for him. Some impulse impelled him to visit the western wing. He knew that the wide hall on which his room door opened had a corridor leading from it into the ruined western wing of the hall. Some impulse stronger than his will, some "spirit in his feet," tempted him forth under cover of the silence and the night to explore the dangerous region in the vague hope of finding some trace of the mysterious ghost of last night. To have met her again he would have dared even more threatening dangers than the settling timbers and falling roof which Fred, and Clare and Elinor were unanimous in declaring menaced everyone who entered the decaying portion of the hall. Softly shod in his velvet slippers, he opened the door and peered out into the long hall. It was lighted by long windows at either end, through which the moonlight poured a flood of white radiance. Putting a convenient box of matches into the pocket of his dressing-gown, he sallied boldly forth. Whether ghost or human, he longed to encounter the beautiful girl he loved again. He entered the long corridor and walked along softly, guided by the moonlight that entered through the windows and lay in fantastic shadows upon the floor. He found that the building was in a ruinous condition indeed. The rooms into which he looked were dismantled and bare, the papering hung in ragged, fantastic strips from the walls; huge rats scampered over the floor, frightened night-birds flapped against the windows with wild, unearthly noises. Surely, the place was well-fitted to be the abode of ghosts and shadows, it was so weird and uncanny.