“Penelope!” came a voice through the storm, and a second later a man plunged into the recess, crashing against the wall beside her.  Something told her who it was, even before he dropped beside her and threw his strong arm about her shoulders.  The sound of the storm died away as she buried her face on his shoulder and shivered so mightily that he was alarmed.  With her face burning, her blood tingling, she lay there and wondered if the throbbing of her heart were not about to kill her.

He was crying something into her ear—­wild, incoherent words that seemed to have the power to quiet the storm.  And she was responding—­she knew that eager words were falling from her lips, but she never knew what they were—­responding with a fervor that was overwhelming her with joy.  Lips met again and again and there was no thought of the night, of the feud, the escapade, the Renwood ghost—­or of aught save the two warm living human bodies that had found each other.

The storm, swerving with the capricious mountain winds, suddenly swept their refuge with sheets of water.  Randolph Shaw threw the raincoats over his companion and both laughed hysterically at their plight, suddenly remembered.

“We can’t stay here,” he shouted.

“We can’t go out into it,” she cried.  “Where are we?”

“Renwood’s,” he called back.  Their position was untenable.  He was drenched; the raincoats protected her as she crouched back into the most remote corner.  Looking about he discovered a small door leading to the cellar.  It opened the instant he touched the latch.  “Come, quick,” he cried, lifting her to her feet.  “In here—­stoop!  I have the light.  This is the cellar.  I’ll have to break down a door leading to the upper part of the house, but that will not be difficult.  Here’s an axe or two.  Good Lord, I’m soaked!”

“Whe—­where are we going?” she gasped, as he drew her across the earthern floor.

“Upstairs.  It’s comfortable up there.”  They were at the foot of the narrow stairway.  She held back.

“Never!  It’s the—­the haunted house!  I can’t—­Randolph.”

“Pooh!  Don’t be afraid.  I’m with you, dearest.”

“I know,” she gulped.  “But you have only one arm.  Oh, I can’t!”

“It’s all nonsense about ghosts.  I’ve slept here twenty times, Penelope.  People have seen my light and my shadow, that’s all.  I’m a pretty substantial ghost.”

“Oh, dear!  What a disappointment.  And there are no spooks?  Not even Mrs. Renwood?”

“Of course she may come back, dear, but you’d hardly expect a respectable lady spook to visit the place with me stopping here.  Even ghosts have regard for conventionalities.  She couldn’t—­”

“How much more respectable than I,” Penelope murmured plaintively.

“Forgive me,” he implored.

“I would—­only you are so wet.”

The door above was locked, but Shaw swung the axe so vigorously that any but a very strong-nerved ghost must have been frightened to death once more.