“Hullo!” he said in a shaking voice, which he tried to control.  “What on earth’s to pay in that vacant lot now?”

“Well, what is it?” demanded his father.

“Oh, nothing, only—­well, there are lights over it exactly as if there was a house there, just about where the windows would be.  It looked as if you could walk right in, but when you look close there are those old dried-up weeds rattling away on the ground the same as ever.  I looked at it and couldn’t believe my eyes.  A woman saw it, too.  She came along just as I did.  She gave one look, then she screeched and ran.  I waited for some one else, but nobody came.”

Mr. Townsend rushed out of the room.

“I daresay it’ll be gone when he gets there,” began George, then he stared round the room.  “What’s to pay here?” he cried.

“Oh, George, the whole house shook all at once, and all the looking-glasses broke,” wailed his mother, and Adrianna and Cordelia joined.

George whistled with pale lips.  Then Mr. Townsend entered.

“Well,” asked George, “see anything?”

“I don’t want to talk,” said his father.  “I’ve stood just about enough.”

“We’ve got to sell out and go back to Townsend Centre,” cried his wife in a wild voice.  “Oh, David, say you’ll go back.”

“I won’t go back for any such nonsense as this, and sell a twenty-five thousand dollar house for five thousand,” said he firmly.

But that very night his resolution was shaken.  The whole family watched together in the dining-room.  They were all afraid to go to bed—­that is, all except possibly Mr. Townsend.  Mrs. Townsend declared firmly that she for one would leave that awful house and go back to Townsend Centre whether he came or not, unless they all stayed together and watched, and Mr. Townsend yielded.  They chose the dining-room for the reason that it was nearer the street should they wish to make their egress hurriedly, and they took up their station around the dining-table on which Cordelia had placed a luncheon.

“It looks exactly as if we were watching with a corpse,” she said in a horror-stricken whisper.

“Hold your tongue if you can’t talk sense,” said Mr. Townsend.

The dining-room was very large, finished in oak, with a dark blue paper above the wainscotting.  The old sign of the tavern, the Blue Leopard, hung over the mantel-shelf.  Mr. Townsend had insisted on hanging it there.  He had a curious pride in it.  The family sat together until after midnight and nothing unusual happened.  Mrs. Townsend began to nod; Mr. Townsend read the paper ostentatiously.  Adrianna and Cordelia stared with roving eyes about the room, then at each other as if comparing notes on terror.  George had a book which he studied furtively.  All at once Adrianna gave a startled exclamation and Cordelia echoed her.  George whistled faintly.  Mrs. Townsend awoke with a start and Mr. Townsend’s paper rattled to the floor.