one of the real Carters, you know--would hardly bend her head."

"Perhaps you're right," he answered, and laughed shortly under his
breath, "but in that case how would you fix the racial characteristics
of that little firebrand, Molly Merryweather?"



CHAPTER VII


GAY RUSHES INTO A QUARREL AND SECURES A KISS


At dawn next morning Jonathan Gay, who had spent a restless night in
his uncle's room, came out into the circular drive with his gun on
his shoulder, and strolled in the direction of the meadows beyond the
haunted Poplar Spring at the end of the lawn. It was a rimy October
morning, and the sun rising slowly above the shadowy aspens in the
graveyard, shone dimly through the transparent silver veil that hung
over the landscape. The leaves, still russet and veined with purple on
the boughs overhead, lay in brown wind-rifts along the drive, where they
had been blown during the night before the changeful weather had settled
into a frosty stillness at daybreak.

"By Jove, it's these confounded acorns that keep me awake," thought Gay,
with a nervous irritation which was characteristic of him when he had
been disturbed. "A dozen ghosts couldn't have managed to make themselves
more of a nuisance."