“I like that Captain Bangs,” observed Emily.

“So do I. It seems as if we’d known him for ever so long.  And how his salt-water talk does take me back.  Seems as if I was hearin’ my father and Uncle Abner—­yes, and Eben, too—­speakin’.  And it is so sort of good and natural to be callin’ somebody ‘Cap’n.’  I was brought up amongst cap’ns and I guess I’ve missed ’em more’n I realized.  Now you must go to sleep; you’ll need all the sleep you can get, and that won’t be much.  Good night.”

“Good night,” said Emily, sleepily.  A few minutes later she said:  “Auntie, what did become of that lantern our driver was so anxious about?  The last I saw of it it was on the floor by the sofa where I was lying.  But I didn’t seem to remember it after the captain and Mr. Parker came.”

Mrs. Barnes’ reply was, if not prompt, at least conclusive.

“It’s over there somewhere,” she said.  “The light went out, but it ain’t likely the lantern went with it.  Now you go to sleep.”

Miss Howes obeyed.  She was asleep very soon thereafter.  But Thankful lay awake, thinking and wondering—­yes, and dreading.  What sort of a place was this she had inherited?  She distinctly did not believe in what Hannah Parker had called “aberrations,” but she had heard something—­something strange and inexplicable in that little back bedroom.  The groans might have been caused by the gale, but no gale spoke English, or spoke at all, for that matter.  Who, or what, was it that had said “Oh Lord!” in the darkness and solitude of that bedroom?

CHAPTER IV

Thankful opened her eyes.  The sunlight was streaming in at the window.  Beneath that window hens were clucking noisily.  Also in the room adjoining someone was talking, protesting.

“I don’t know, Hannah,” said Mr. Parker’s voice.  “I tell you I don’t know where it is.  If I knew I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?  I don’t seem to remember what I done with it.”

“Well, then, you’ve got to set down and not stir till you do remember, that’s all.  When you went out of this house last evenin’ to go to the postoffice—­Oh, yes!  To the postoffice—­that’s where you said you was goin’—­you had the lantern and that umbrella.  When you came back, hollerin’ about the light you see in the Cap’n Abner house, you had the lantern.  But the umbrella you didn’t have.  Now where is it?”

“I don’t know, Hannah.  I—­I—­do seem to remember havin’ had it, but—­”

“Well, I’m glad you remember that much.  You lost one of your mittens, too, but ’twas an old one, so I don’t mind that so much.  But that umbrella was your Christmas present and ’twas good gloria silk with a real gilt-plated handle.  I paid two dollars and a quarter for that umbrella, and I told you never to take it out in a storm because you were likely to turn it inside out and spile it.  If I’d seen you take it last night I’d have stopped you, but you was gone afore I missed it.”