tightened as she suddenly put her face forward and whispered defiantly:

'I mean _spooky_!'

'Helen,' he expostulated, 'where did you get such ideas?'

'You heard the old Indian legends,' she insisted, not more than half
frightened but conscious of an eerie influence of the still loneliness
and experiencing the first shiver of excitement as she stirred her own
fancy. 'Who knows but there is some foundation for them?'

He snorted his disdain and scholarly contempt.

'Then,' said Helen, resorting to argument, 'where did that fire come
from? Who made it? Why has he disappeared like this?'

'Even you,' said her father, quick as always to join issue where sound
argument offered itself as a weapon, 'will hardly suppose that a spook
eats bacon and drinks coffee,'

'The--the ghost,' said Helen, with a humorous glance in her eyes,
'might have whisked him away by the hair of the head!'

He shook her hand off and strode forward impatiently. Again and again
he shouted 'Hello!' and 'Ho, there! Ho, I say!' There came no answer.
The bacon was growing cold; the fire burning down. He turned a
perplexed face towards Helen's eager one.

'It is odd,' he said irritably. He was not a man to relish being
baffled.