not expecting.”
“Don’t you expect anything, Prof?” asked Vernie, gaily.
“What do you mean by expect, child? Do you mean wish or think?”
“Gracious, goodness, Professor! I never know what I mean by the words I use, and I never care!”
Professor Hardwick’s hobby was the use of words, and rarely did he fail to question it, if a word was misused or uncertainly used in his presence. But he smiled benignly on the pretty child, and didn’t bother her further.
Finally, the men drew together to make up the budget of necessary expenses and the women talked clothes.
“Smocks all round,” said Norma, who loved the unconventional in dress.
“Not for me!” said Eve, who didn’t.
Milly giggled. “Let every one wear just what she chooses,” she settled it. “I’m at my best in white linen in the summer time, but what about laundry? Well, I shall leave two sets of things packed, and then send for whichever I want.”
Norma, uninterested in clothes, edged over toward the men. Though a friend of the Landons and acquainted with Professor Hardwick, she had never met Braye or Tracy before.
Both succumbed to her sure-fire smile, but Tracy showed it and Braye didn’t.
“Sit here, Miss Cameron,” and Tracy eagerly made a place for her at his side; “we need a lady assistant. How much do you think it ought to cost to provision nine people and two or three natives for a month?”
“It isn’t a question of what it ought to cost,” returned Norma, “but what it will cost. But in any case it will be less than most of us would spend if we went to the average summer hotel. So why not just put down some round numbers, divide ’em by nine and let it go at that?”
“Fine!” approved Landon. “No food dictator could beat that scheme! I wonder if ghost-hunters are as hungry as other hunters, or if we’ll be so scared we’ll lose our appetites.”
“I have a profound belief in ghosts,” Norma asserted, “but I shall only indulge in it between meals. Count me in for all the good things going, three times a day.”
“What do you mean by profound?” asked the Professor; “deep-seated or widely informed?”
“Both,” answered Norma, flashing her pretty smile at the serious old man. “Profundity of all kinds is my happy hunting-ground, and on this trip I expect to get all the profundity I want.”
“And I’m the girl to put the fun in profundity,” cried Vernie, coming over to them. “My mission is to keep you serious people joyed up. Mr. Tracy, your profession won’t interfere with your having a jolly time, will it? No, I see it won’t, by that twinkly little smile.”
“You may count on me,” said the clergyman a bit stiffly, but with a cordial glance at the girl.
“And I can wind Professor Hardwick round my finger,” Vernie went on, “for a companion on a gay lark, I don’t know any one better than a dry-as-dust old college professor!”
The object of this encomium received it with a benignant smile, but Gifford Bruce reproved his saucy niece.
“I’ll leave you at home, miss, if you talk impertinences,” he declared.
“Not much you won’t, my bestest, belovedest Uncle! Why, I’m the leading lady of this troupe. And I expect the spectre will appear to me first of all. That’s my motto: ’Spect the Spectre! How’s that? Then the rest of you can inspect the spectre!”
“Vernie! don’t be so excruciatingly funny,” begged Braye, while Milly Landon giggled at the pretty child, whose charm and sweetness took all rudeness from her foolery.
“Perhaps we ought to call in an inspector to inspect the spectre,” contributed Landon.
“There, there, Wynne,” said Braye, “we’ll take such stuff from an ignorant little girl but not from a grown-up man.”
“Ignorant, huh!” scorned Vernie. “I’ll bet you couldn’t have passed my examination in psychology!”
“Perhaps not,” admitted Braye, “but after this trip of ours, we’ll all be honour men.”
“I want it thoroughly understood,” said Mr. Bruce, “that I range myself on the side of the sceptics. I don’t want to sail under false colours and I wish to state positively that there are no ghosts or phantasms or any such things. Moreover, I announce my intention of fooling you gullible ones, if I can.”
“Oh, that isn’t fair!” exclaimed Landon. “I don’t believe in the things either, but I want an honest test. Why, you take away the whole point of the experiment if you’re going to put up a trick on us!”
“No, no, Bruce,” said the Professor, “that won’t do. Come, now, give me your word there’ll be no hocus-pocus or I refuse to go at all.”
“If it’s any sort of a real test, Hardwick, it oughtn’t to be possible to fool you.”
“That’s true,” said Eve; “and I’m not afraid of any tricks. If they are tricks, I’ll know it – ”
“I too,” said Norma. “I’m sensitive to all psychical manifestations and if I can’t tell a real phantasm from Mr. Bruce’s tricks, I deserve to be fooled.”
“I think it’s a good thing that Mr. Bruce warned us,” observed John Tracy. “It puts us on our guard. But I think the rest of us ought to agree not to do anything of that sort. We can expect and discount Mr. Bruce’s little game, but if others are going to do the same, it seems to me the game isn’t worth playing.”
“Right you are!” declared Landon, and forthwith everybody present except Gifford Bruce solemnly pledged his or her word to do nothing tricky or fraudulent, and to preserve an open-minded, honest attitude toward any developments they might experience.
“And with eight argus-eyed inquirers watching him, Mr. Bruce can’t put anything over,” opined Landon, and the others agreed.
CHAPTER III
Black Aspens
Though mid-July, it was a chilly dusk through which the two motor cars ascended the last stretch of mountain road toward the old Montgomery mansion. The sun set early behind the Green Mountains and the house, half-way up an eastern slope, appeared faintly through the shadows.
To the right, tall forest trees waved their topmost branches with an eerie, soughing sound, or stood, menacingly silent, in black, sullen majesty. Beneath them a tangled underbrush gave forth faint, rustling hints of some wild life or suddenly ceased to a grim stillness.
Then the road lay through a thick grove of aspens, close, black and shivering as they stood, sentinel like and fearsome, only dimly outlined against the dark, clouded sky. Once in the grove, the shadows were dense, and the quivering sounds seemed intensified to a muttered protest against intrusion. A strange bird gave forth a few raucous notes, and then the dread silence returned.
A quick, damp chill foreboded still water and the road followed the margin of a small lake or pond, sinister in its inky depths, which mirrored the still blacker aspen trees.
Suddenly, in a small clearing, they came upon the house. In the uncertain light it seemed enormous, shapeless and beyond all words repelling. It seemed to have a personality, defiant and forbidding, that warned of mystery and disaster. Aspen trees, tall and gaunt, grew so close that their whispering leaves brushed the windows, and crowded in protecting, huddled clumps to ward off trespassers.
No lights showed through the deep caverns of the windows, but one faint gleam flickered above the entrance door.
“Whew!” cried Landon, jumping from his seat with a thud on the stone terrace, “I won’t go through that woods again! I’ll go home in an aeroplane, – and I’m ready to go now!”
“So am I,” said Milly, in a quivering, tearful voice. “Oh, Wynne, why did we