Told in a French Garden / August, 1914

ENED AT

f a Bride'

d to surprise us at night with a new centre piece for the table, and the Divorcée spent most of her time tending Angéle's baby, while the Doctor and the Nurse were eternally fussing over new kinds of bandages and if ever we got tog

we were unu

think over, and that we all took it so seriously proved how very much we ha

d met on so many battle fields-conquered, and been conquered by one another-embracing with enthusiasm. It was to the credit of all of us that we did not make the inevitab

ind the tray, and we each went and took our cup, found a comfortable seat in

aced it on his head after the manner of the French Conscripts, struck an attitude in the middle o

stonians believe in. The man was a rising lawyer, rather a sceptic on all sorts of questions, as most of us chaps pride

d life, the nicest year of some girls' lives, I have heard-in hunting the place. What they finally settled on was an old colonial house with a colonnaded front, and a round tower at each end, standing back from the road, and approached

They saw what could be done with the place, and did not concern themselves with why other people had not cared to live there. Architects, inte

bout Pompeii and cross to Capri-together; and then ravage antiquity shops in Paris-together. They returned in the early days of a glorious September.

the house once

ll-earned sleep, they took their coffee on the terrace off the breakfast room, under a yellow awning, they certainly did not think, if they ever had, of

id not ring. After a few moments-as there was absolutely no sound of the carriage passing-she got up, and gently pushed the shutter-her room was on the front-there was nothing there, so, attaching no importance to

tead of that she kept looking at the clock, and just before twelve, cold chills began to go down her back, when she heard the rapid approach of a carriage-this tim

re was a

nly sure that she heard a hurried step in the corridor-it passed the door. Now she was naturally a very unimaginative person, and had never had occasion to know f

undreds of delightful things to do, wiped out that bad quarter

und sleeper. Besides, it was not important. If he had, he would not have been nervous about it. Still, she could not sleep, and, just before the dining room clock began to chime midnight-she had never heard it before, and that she heard it

out he was standing smiling in

d a carriage come up th

e replied, "b

some one coming al

the door, and turned on the light.

your man, and have him see i

edge of the bed, an

people. We have happened to hear a noise which we can't explain

ared, "but you cannot deny that it is

," he said. "Let's go to sleep. At any r

ept for fifteen minutes at midnight, the place was ideal. They were both level-headed, neither believed in anything super-natural. Were they to be driven out of such a place by so harmless a thing as an

she felt it intruding on her thoughts at the dinner table; then she was unable to sleep for an hour or two after the fifteen minutes had passed, and, finally, one night, she fled into h

d no intention of being driven

have a big week ender, and perhaps we can prove to ourselves that our nerves are wrong. One thing is s

mind it y

a b

ou are

, because I kno

that if I slept you

nor-I sho

d. "I shall go right to sleep." An

morning, he insiste

o men who dabble in laboratory spiritualism; just nice, live, healthy

, "it would not trouble me if

t now I should be sure to hea

e replied, "then I do

we'll have the

rday every room in th

t and hostess heard the running horses, as usual, and they were conscious that one or two people turned a listening ear, but evidently no one s

as arriving at midnight. She had a fit of nerves as the invisible vehicle and its running horses seemed about to ride over her. She ran in, trembling with fear, to tell the tale, and of course every one laughed at her, and the matter would have been dropped, if it had not happened that, just at that moment a very pa

s-the facts, as he knew them, were safer than the tales which

t one night, when he was driving from a place he had up country, his team was run into at a railway crossing five miles from here-one of those grade crossings that never ought to have been-and he was killed and his horses came home at midnight. '

o go back to town," sai

re you," said the host. "They wo

hand through the Man's arm, and smiled as she said: "It's all over. I don't mind a bit. When I heard you s

"I'll bet my top hat you

there. I went to school with the son, and whenever any one bragged,

ir, ran under it, caught it between his lips, and ma

ngster, your idea of ghosts is terribly illogical. It was the man

eel afraid that I have missed my vocation, and that flights in the imagination are more in my line than flights in the air. I don't know what

ist, "a dollar is just abou

said the Critic, "I should have fo

r. "I know one of a haunted house on St.

one your stunt. No more stories to-night. Off to bed.

at

ou to-m

self to-morrow. Any one else want to go with me?" The Journalist said that he did, and the party broke up. As

that the team came home there must have been great ex

t's shout of laug

yed him with sh

rnedest ghost story I ever heard. Everything and ev

lt," said the Youn