Arden put her hand in and grasped the box. But it resisted her first effort to wrench it out.
“I’ll help you,” offered Dick.
Together they pulled, and the box came forth. It was about a foot long, eight inches in width and about six in depth. It was closed by a heavy brass padlock.
Their first care, on reaching the warm and light room where the Christmas party had come to such a strange end, was to put Viney down on an improvised couch and give her some hot coffee. She had regained her senses, but a great fear and wonder seemed to be upon her.
“Have they—have they gone?” she faltered.
“Who?” asked Granny.
“Those real ghosts—the ghosts I used to be myself.”
“Viney, have you been up to ghost tricks here in Sycamore Hall?” Granny’s voice was stern.
Viney Tucker looked up, more defiant now. She was rapidly recovering from her fall, which was not so much of a fall as a slide down a smooth wooden chute. It wasn’t the ash-chute, but one forming part of a secret passage, as they learned later.
“Yes,” Viney confessed, “I was the ghosts. But I’ll never be one again. I did it to save the Hall for you, Hannah. I remembered the old stories of Nathaniel Greene and Patience Howe. And when I found you were going to be cheated out of the money you should have had for the sale of this property I decided to stop it from being demolished if I could. So I secretly made a red cloak, and from a masquerade costumer in a distant city I got the Continental soldier’s uniform. I hid them away here in the chest. At times I would slip in here and scare the workmen, by pretending to be either dead Patience on the bed or the tramping soldier, with a red rag around my head and my hat pulled down over my face. It worked, too!” she said, not a little proudly.