I did keep my eyes open as much as I could." "And the Colonel, how did he take all this excitement about the ha'nt ?" "It bothered him considerably, but Rad kept him from hearing it as much as he could." "When did the ha'nt appear again after the party ?" "Oh, by that time all sorts of rumors were running about among the negroes.

The whole place was haunted and several of the plantation hands had left.

But the next thing that we heard directly was in the early evening before the robbery when Mose, appearing terribly frightened, said he had seen the ha'nt rising in a cloud of blue smoke out of the spring-hole." "And how did the Colonel and Radnor take this ?" "The Colonel was angry because he had been bragging about Mose not being afraid, and Rad was dazed.

He didn't know what to think; he hustled Mose out of the way before we could ask any questions." "And what did you think ?" "Well, I fancied at the time that he had really seen something, but as I thought it over in the light of later events I came to the conclusion that he was shamming, both then and in the middle of the night when he roused the house." "That is, you wished to think him shamming, in order to prove his complicity in the robbery and the murder; and so you twisted the facts to suit your theory ?" "I don't think you can say that," I returned somewhat hotly.

"It's merely a question of interpreting the facts." "He didn't gain much by raising all that hullabaloo in the middle of the night." "Why yes, that was done in order to throw suspicion on the ha'nt." "Oh, I see!" laughed Terry.