“Do you know who they were?” asked Mr. Trevor, who had already heard something of the yesterday’s adventure from Emmie.
“The one is called Harper, a strange, weird-looking old man, with long grizzled hair, and croaking voice,” replied Vibert. “I don’t care if I never set eyes on him again,—but he lives just outside our gate. The other was a very different sort of person, evidently quite a gentleman.”
“Did you think so?” said Emmie, in a tone suggestive of a doubt on the subject.
“Why, he is a colonel,” cried Vibert; “you heard him say so himself,—a colonel belonging to the American army.”
“It is easy enough for a man to call himself an American colonel,” said Bruce.
“I don’t think it fair to disbelieve a gentleman’s account of himself until one has cause to doubt his truthfulness,” remarked Vibert. “Certainly,” he added, glancing at Emmie, “Colonel Standish did tell us rather wonderful stories. You remember that one of the murdered Red Indian’s ghost keeping watch over buried treasure?”
“It was a horrible story,” said Emmie.
“And so graphically told!” exclaimed Vibert. “I’ll let you hear the tale, papa; but I shall tell it to great disadvantage. A ghost story must lose all its thrilling effect when heard at a luncheon-table. Fancy being interrupted at the crisis by a request for ‘a little more mutton!’”
After the tale had been told, and the meal concluded, Vibert went out again with his gun, to seek better success in the woods which surrounded Myst Court. The youth was wont to enter eagerly into any new kind of amusement, but three days were usually sufficient to make him tired of any pursuit.
Mr. Trevor, Emmie, and Bruce went into the drawing-room together, to talk over future plans. They had scarcely seated themselves by the table, on which Bruce had placed some papers of estimates, when the old-fashioned knocker on the front door gave a loud announcement that a visitor had come to the house.