Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-10-03
CHAPTER XI.

\ A "There ain't no use your set
 tin here waitin. She's went off buggy ridin' with our Abe. Him and hers wonderful took with each other, and
 neither of 'em's got eyes fur no other ones."
 q seen Abe's buggy ahead of me when 1 was drivin' over here," Hen answered, his tone expressing timid
 doubt of the truth of MT. Morning stars assertion, "and I didn't take notice to no lady settin' alongside of him. He rode clean down the pike ahead of me. Our buggies was so close apart I could see right into his'n. And till I got here already Eunice she was here."
 "She knowed better'n to git in with him near here. She likely walked over the schoolhouse and behind Zoar's church up and then got in his buggy above the town out, sos us we wouldn't see her."
 Very low in his mind and looking abjectly disappointed and discouraged, Henny on receiving this information rose to go home.
 Kinross unused on the situation as for an hour longer he wandered up and down the garden in the gathering night. His promenade brought him every now and then to corner of the house from which he could see in an unoccupied and reputedly haunt ed" part of the building a faint flicker ing light in one of the windows.
 He had been told of the tradition con- cerning the ghost who visited this wing of the old house. The Morning stars were very proud of the distinc- tion of living with the only ghost of neighborhood were never left long in ignorance of it. Kinross felt sure, from what he had seen of the family, that none of them could possibly be in- duced to go near that haunted quarter of the house after dark and he was naturally puzzled, therefore, to account for the light he saw in the window just now He thought he would ask Mrs. Morningstar to let him sleep in the haunted room some night and see whether he could not meet and lay the spirit that troubled it. It did not occur to him to associate the light with the absence of Eunice. He accepted. as unquestioningly as did Hen Muckle- henny, MT. Morningstars story of her clandestine drive with Abe. Indeed, the family's agitation over the fact was keeping them up long after their usual early bedtime, as he knew from the lamp light in the kitchen to which the circuit of his stroll periodically brought him.
 His impressions of Eunice were in themselves to readjustment. That girl capable of even accidentally read ing ''The Compleat Angler and dis cussing it as she had done should take up" with Abe Morningstar was singular, to say the least. The flower like beauty of her face, the peculiarly thrilling quality of her voice, her grace and, in some respects, eXquisitencss made it seem incongruous that she should, as Mir. Morningstar had ex- pressed it, be wonderful took with our Abe.r And then the intelligence she had revealed this evening-what was it she had said about "The Com pleat Angler?'-it was not flor its didactic instructions about fishing" that she cared for it. but flor the anecdotes scattered through it. the quotations and songs and poems"
 Good Lord! Should he presently dis cover that Abe was familiar with Chaucer and Spenser and that Ollie was a student of Shakespeare and Milton? He couldn't have been more astonished If he had found Mrs. Morn ingstar quoting Henry James or come across Mir. Morningstar intelligently reading George Meredith. As a psy- chOlogist he could not reconcile the fact of the girls having left school at the age of twelve, according to her foster mothers own acknowledgement, with her capacity for assimilating Izaak waltOn's little classic. He re- called that Mrs. MOrningstar had told him of the child's grief at being taken from school. "She cried wonderful" the woman had said in the unsympa- thetic tone with which she always spoke of the girl.
 Tt would take a Sherlock Holmes to ferret out this mystery" he said to himself.
 As he came to this conclusion a turn in his walk brought him in sight again of the haunted back building. and he saw that the lighted window had be- come dark. "The ghost has gone to roOst." he decided
 A moment later as he came around to the front of the house the light of a lamp illumined one of the upstairs bedroom windows. the room in which, as he knew, Ollie and Eunice slept But a moment before he had passed the kitchen in which he had seen Ollie and her parents sitting about the table. Who, then. was in that upstairs room7 No member of the MornIngstar house hold would commit the extravagance of leaving a lamp burning in an empty room. Had the ghost wandered from the back room to the front one7 But ghosts dId not move by the light of kerosene lamps.
 Presently in his circuit about the house he found that the trio in the kitchen had at last taken their lamps and gone upstairs. leaving the Kitchen door unlatched for him and for the