"Yes, yes; but that won't do. I don't want to have to drive ten
miles to see somebody else's ghost. I want one of my own on the
premises. IS there a ghost at Lyng?"

His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that
she had flung back tantalizingly: "Oh, there IS one, of course,
but you'll never know it."

"Never know it?" Boyne pulled her up. "But what in the world
constitutes a ghost except the fact of its being known for one?"

"I can't say. But that's the story."

"That there's a ghost, but that nobody knows it's a ghost?"

"Well--not till afterward, at any rate."

"Till afterward?"

"Not till long, long afterward."

"But if it's once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why
hasn't its signalement been handed down in the family? How has
it managed to preserve its incognito?"

Alida could only shake her head. "Don't ask me. But it has."

"And then suddenly--" Mary spoke up as if from some cavernous
depth of divination--"suddenly, long afterward, one says to one's
self, 'THAT WAS it?'"