“You needn’t talk to me about sleeping well,” said she.  “I know something queer happened in that room last night by the way you act.”

They all looked at Mrs. Simmons, inquiringly—­the librarian with malicious curiosity and triumph, the minister with sad incredulity, Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl with unmixed terror.  The widow bore herself with dignity.

“I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been accounted for in some rational manner,” said she.

“What was it?” persisted Eliza Lippincott.

“I do not wish to discuss the matter any further,” replied Mrs. Simmons shortly.  Then she passed her plate for more creamed potato.  She felt that she would die before she confessed to the ghastly absurdity of that nightcap, or to having been disturbed by the flight of peacocks off a blue field of chintz after she had scoffed at the possibility of such a thing.  She left the whole matter so vague that in a fashion she came off the mistress of the situation.  She at all events impressed everybody by her coolness in the face of no one knew what nightly terror.

After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved back into her old room.  Scarcely a word was spoken during the process of moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and looked guilty when they met one another’s eyes, as if conscious of betraying a common fear.

That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill and requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that night.

“I don’t ask to have my effects moved there,” said he, “for I could scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy, but I would like, if you please, to sleep there to-night for the purpose of refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition which may have obtained root here.”

Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted his offer.

“How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such nonsense passes my comprehension,” said she.

“It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe in ghosts,” said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain feminine contentment in hearing him.  The minister was a child to her; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby exalted.

That night about twelve o’clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber.  He had been sitting up until that hour preparing his sermon.