“Do I understand you to intimate that both ghosts were there together?” inquired the Duchess anxiously.

“Both of them were there,” answered Uncle Larry.  “You see, one of them belonged to the house, and had to be there all the time, and the other was attached to the person of Baron Duncan, and had to follow him there; wherever he was there was the ghost also.  But Eliphalet, he had scarcely time to think this out when he heard both sounds again, not one after another, but both together, and something told him—­some sort of an instinct he had—­that those two ghosts didn’t agree, didn’t get on together, didn’t exactly hit it off; in fact, that they were quarreling.”

“Quarreling ghosts!  Well, I never!” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s remark.

“It is a blessed thing to see ghosts dwell together in unity,” said Dear Jones.

And the Duchess added, “It would certainly be setting a better example.”

“You know,” resumed Uncle Larry, “that two waves of light or of sound may interfere and produce darkness or silence.  So it was with these rival spooks.  They interfered, but they did not produce silence or darkness.  On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular dark seance.  A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing around the room.”

“Where did they get the banjo?” asked Dear Jones skeptically.

“I don’t know.  Materialized it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine.  You don’t suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do you?  Every spook has its own instrument of torture.  Angels play on harps, I’m informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines.  These spooks of Eliphalet Duncan’s were ghosts with all the modern improvements, and I guess they were capable of providing their own musical weapons.  At all events, they had them there in the little old house at Salem the night Eliphalet and his friend came down.  And they played on them, and they rang the bell, and they rapped here, there, and everywhere.  And they kept it up all night.”

“All night?” asked the awe-stricken Duchess.

“All night long,” said Uncle Larry solemnly; “and the next night, too.  Eliphalet did not get a wink of sleep, neither did his friend.  On the second night the house ghost was seen by the officer; on the third night it showed itself again; and the next morning the officer packed his grip-sack and took the first train to Boston.  He was a New Yorker, but he said he’d sooner go to Boston than see that ghost again.  Eliphalet, he wasn’t scared at all, partly because he never saw either the domiciliary or the titular spook, and partly because he felt himself on friendly terms with the spirit