She drew from the pocket of her coat a small electric torch and flashed it into the interior of the house.  The bright light showed them glimpses of queer chairs standing about in odd corners and finally lighted up a broad stairway.

“It’s the hall,” announced Mrs. Gilligan.  “Now forward march, and we’ll soon find out where the lights are.”

“There must be a push button somewhere,” suggested Violet, and even in their present nervous state the other girls laughed at her.

“A push button!” cried Laura.  “Do you expect to find electric lights out in this wilderness?”

“We’re lucky if we find a chandelier somewhere,” added Billie.  “I hope we don’t have to burn candles or lamps.  They aren’t just exactly what you might call cheerful.”

“And something cheerful is what we need,” added Laura ruefully.

“Well, if you’re after acetylene gas I guess you’ll be disappointed,” said Mrs. Gilligan as her torch lighted up a wonderful old-fashioned richly carved candelabrum containing a dozen candles, half burned and looking rather wilted.  “It’s candles we’ll be burning while we’re here.”

The girls groaned.

“But they give such a ghostly, flickering light,” protested Violet, as if it were in some way Mrs. Gilligan’s fault.  “I know I’ll never be able to stand it,” and she glanced nervously over her shoulder.

“Well, could you stand the dark any better?” asked Mrs. Gilligan practically, as she began to light the candles one after another.  “There will probably be other candelabra in the house, and if you get enough of them burning there’s nothing in this world that is prettier.  For myself I just love candle light.”

“Yes, when you’re in civilization,” put in Laura.  “But not out here.”

“I’ve found another one!” cried Billie, who had been prospecting on her own account.  “And here’s another!  Why we’ll have a big illumination before we’re through.”

“That’s the way to talk,” said Mrs. Gilligan approvingly, as she crossed over to Billie’s side of the large hall and began to light the other candles.  “If we just make the best of everything and make up our minds to have a good time, we’ll have a good time.  And if we don’t we might just as well take the driver’s advice and go home again.”

“Go home?  Well I should just say not!” cried Laura.  “The very idea of such a thing!  The boys would tease the life out of us.  We’d never hear the end of it.”

“Well then, we’re going to have a good time,” Mrs. Gilligan decided, adding, as she turned toward the door:  “Where have those men gone?  I told them to bring in the things.”

She went out to see about it with the girls at her heels and found the old man and the boy in a heated argument over something.

“Well, if you want to go into that there haunted house, it’s your concern,” the old man was saying in a querulous voice.  “As for me, I wouldn’t step a foot inside of it, no sir, not if you was to give me a farm!”