“What—­ah—­what Miss Hoag said, you mean?”

“Plague take Marietta!” impatiently.  “She wan’t nothin’ but the go-between.  ’Twas my wife that said it.  You understand ’twas Julia, my wife, talkin’, don’t you?”

“Why—­ah—­why—­I suppose—­”

“Suppose?  Don’t you know ’twas?”

“Why—­ah—­no doubt, no doubt.”

“Course there ain’t any doubt.  Well then, Julia said there was a dark man heavin’ a sort of evil influence over Lulie.”

“She said a small dark man, a stranger.  And she said he was present among us.  So far as I can see I was the only small dark stranger.”

“But you ain’t an evil influence, are you?”

“Well, I—­ah—­hope not.  Dear me, no!”

“I hope not, too, and I don’t believe you are.  No, there is some mistake somewheres.  ’Twas Nelson Howard she must have meant.”

“But, Captain Hallett, Mr. Howard is not small.”

“No, and he wan’t there that evenin’, neither.  But I’m bettin’ ’twas him she meant just the same.  Just the same.”

“Do you think that is quite fair to Mr. Howard?  If he isn’t small, nor very dark, and if he was not in your house that evening, how—­”

“I don’t know—­I don’t know.  Anyhow, I don’t believe she meant you, Mr. Bangs.  She couldn’t have.”

“But—­ah—­why not?”

“Because—­well, because you couldn’t be an evil influence if you tried, you wouldn’t know how.  That much I’ll bet on.  There, there, don’t let’s talk no more about it.  Julia and me’ll have another talk pretty soon and then I’ll find out more, maybe.”

So that was the end of this portion of the conversation.  The light keeper positively refused to mention the subject again.  Galusha was left with the uneasy feeling that his brilliant idea of claiming to be the small, dark influence for evil had not been as productive of good results as he had hoped.  Certainly it had not in the least shaken the captain’s firm belief in his spirit messages, nor had it, apparently, greatly abated his prejudice against young Howard.  On the other hand, Lulie found comfort in the fact that in all other respects her father seemed as rational and as keen as he had ever been.  The exciting evening with the Hoag spook had worked no lasting harm.  For so much she and her friends were grateful.

The autumn gales blew themselves out and blew in their successors, the howling blasts of winter.  Winter at Gould’s Bluffs, so Galusha Bangs discovered, was no light jest of the weather bureau.  His first January no’theaster taught him that.  Lying in his bed at one o’clock in the morning, feeling that bed tremble beneath him as the wind gripped the sturdy gables of the old house, while the snow beat in hissing tumult against the panes, and the great breakers raved and roared at the foot of the bluff—­this was an experience for Galusha.  The gray dawn of the morning brought another, for, although it was