“Mother, may I go to Eleanor Savell’s this evening?”

“Away out to ‘Heartsease,’ Grace?  Who is going with you?”

“No one,” replied Grace truthfully.  “Mother, please don’t say no.  I simply must see Eleanor at once.”

“But I thought that you were not friendly with Eleanor,” persisted Mrs. Harlowe.

“That is true,” Grace answered, “but just now that is the very thing I want to be.  It’s this way, mother.  Eleanor is going to try to make some trouble for Marian Barber in the class, and I must act at once if it is to be prevented.”

“More school-girl difficulties,” commented Mrs. Harlowe, with a smile.  “But how does it happen that you always seem to be in the thick of the fight, Grace?”

“I don’t know, mother,” sighed Grace.  “No one dislikes quarrels more than I do.  May I go?”

“Yes,” assented her mother, “but you must take Bridget with you.  I’ll see her at once and tell her to get ready.”

It had been a raw, disagreeable day, and towards evening a cold rain had set in that was practically half snow.  It was anything but an enviable night for a walk, and Bridget grumbled roundly under her breath as she wrapped herself in the voluminous folds of a water-proof cape and took down a huge, dark-green cotton umbrella from its accustomed nail behind the kitchen door.

“Miss Grace do be crazy to be goin’ out this night.  It’s rheumatics I shall have to-morrow in all me bones,” she growled.

She plodded along at Grace’s side with such an injured expression that Grace felt like laughing outright at the picture of offended dignity that she presented.

Grace chatted gayly as they proceeded and Bridget answered her sallies with grunts and monosyllables.  When they reached the turn of the road Grace said: 

“Bridget, let’s take the short cut.  The walking is good and we’ll save ten minutes’ time by doing it.”

“Phast that haunted house?” gasped Bridget.  “Niver!  May the saints presarve us from hants.”

“Nonsense,” laughed Grace.  “There are no such things as ghosts, and you know it.  If you’re afraid you can go back and wait at your cousin’s for me.  She lives near here, doesn’t she?”

“I will that,” replied Bridget fervently, “but don’t ye be too long gone, Miss Grace.”

“I won’t stay long,” promised Grace, and hurried down the road, leaving Bridget to proceed with much grumbling to her cousin’s house.

The house that Bridget had so flatly refused to pass was a two-story affair of brick that set well back from the highway.  There were rumors afloat that a murder had once been committed there, and that the apparition of the victim, an old man, walked about at night moaning in true ghost fashion.

To be sure no one had as yet been found who had really seen the spectre old man, nevertheless the place kept its ghost reputation and was generally avoided.

Grace, who was nothing if not daring, never lost an opportunity to pass the old house, and jeered openly when any one talked seriously of the “ghost.”