“Honest Injun—­it’s gospel truth!  Speak up, Clint!”

The president looked on the serious faces around him, and was himself slightly awed.

“It’s a matter of two or three nights ago,” said Grey slowly, “that Trigg and I were passing through Sycamore Woods, just below the hotel.  It was after twelve—­bright moonlight, so that we could see everything as plain as day, and we were dead sober.  Just as we passed under the sycamores Trigg grabs my arm, and says, ‘Hi!’ I looked up, and there, not ten yards away, standing dead in the moonlight, was that dummy!  She was all in white—­that dress with the fairy frills, you know—­and had, what’s more, A head!  At least, something white all wrapped around it, and over her shoulders.  At first we thought you or some of the boys had dressed her up and lifted her out there for a joke, and left her to frighten us!  So we started forward, and then—­it’s the gospel truth!—­she moved away, gliding like the moonbeams, and vanished among the trees!”

“Did you see her face?” asked the president.

“No; you bet!  I didn’t try to—­it would have haunted me forever.”

“What do you mean?”

“This—­I mean it was that girl the box belonged to!  She’s dead somewhere—­as you’ll find out sooner or later—­and has come back for her clothes!  I’ve often heard of such things before.”

Despite his coolness, at this corroboration of his own experience, and impressed by Grey’s unmistakable awe, a thrill went through the president.  For an instant he was silent.

“That will do, boys,” he said finally.  “It’s a queer story; but remember, it’s all the more reason now for our keeping our secret.  As for those things, I’ll remove them quietly and at once.”

But he did not.

On the contrary, prolonging his stay at the hotel with plausible reasons, he managed to frequently visit the committee room or its vicinity, at different and unsuspected hours of the day and night.  More than that, he found opportunities to visit the office, and under pretexts of business connected with the economy of the hotel management, informed himself through Miss Marsh on many points.  A few of these details naturally happened to refer to herself, her prospects, her tastes, and education.  He learned incidentally, what he had partly known, that her father had been in better circumstances, and that she had been gently nurtured—­though of this she made little account in her pride in her own independence and devotion to her duties.  But in his own persistent way he also made private notes of the breadth of her shoulders, the size of her waist, her height, length of her skirt, her movements in walking, and other apparently extraneous circumstances.  It was natural that he acquired some supplemental facts,—­that her eyes, under her eye-glasses, were a tender gray,