If Marie had not really believed this, I do not think she would have put into execution a plan which suggested itself to her the week before Thanksgiving.

It was a cruel scheme, and even though she assured herself that it was really for Esther’s good and that it would cure the nervousness, I think she was at heart a little ashamed of herself all the time.

[Illustration:  “WHAT WAS THAT BY THE TELESCOPE?  A WHITE, TALL FIGURE STOOD BY THE INSTRUMENT.”]

At the western end of the third floor there was a stairway leading up to a room at the top of the building, which was occasionally used as an observatory.

A telescope was mounted there, but, as it was not very powerful, the astronomy classes generally used one at the private residence of their professor instead.

The room, being so seldom used, had become a receptacle for old lumber of all sorts.  Girls are so fond of exercising their imagination that it is not strange that they gradually invested the garret-like room at the top of the house with the reputation of being “haunted.”

The ghost, who was said to walk up and down the old stairway and over the creaking floor of the observatory, was thought to be that of a certain Madame Leverrier, who had been teacher of French and astronomy many years before, and had died in the school.

It was said that at midnight the tall, white figure of the Frenchwoman might be seen, peering through the telescope at the stars she had loved so well.

To-be-sure, no girl ever said she herself, had seen this sight, but she had “heard about it from a last year’s girl.”

So the girls got in the habit of walking very rapidly when they had occasion to go past the stairway, which led up from a region occupied by “trunk-rooms,” and of avoiding that part of the house altogether after night.

Marie told Esther the story of the ghost, with many embellishments.  She did not confine herself to one telling, but continually referred to it, with the desire of keeping the matter ever present in Esther’s mind.

She noticed that her quiet little room-mate, although she avowed her non-belief in ghosts, looked frightened whenever the subject was mentioned.

One evening, toward the end of November, the two were seated by their study-table, preparing the next day’s lessons, when Marie suddenly exclaimed that she had mislaid her astronomy.

“Won’t you go after it for me, Esther?” she said, in a kinder tone than usual.

“Certainly, Marie,” replied Esther, glad to be called on for a service.  “Where do you think you left it?”

“I know now exactly where it is.  It’s up in the observatory on the table at the farther end of the room.  I left it there last night when Professor Gaskell took us up in study-hour.  It was dreadfully stupid in me.”

“I’d better take the lamp, hadn’t I?” queried Esther, inwardly dismayed at the prospect of ascending alone to those awful regions, and yet unwilling to refuse so small a service.