“Now, Rosie,” Jack Doring exclaimed, when they were out on the highway, “I am Pirate the Terrible. Lead me to your ghost and I will scare him so that I will make his bones rattle.”
“I saw it in the orchard, right at the cross-roads,” said Rosie.
“Follow me!” Jack commanded. “We’ll take a short cut through the graveyard.”
At that Rosamond stopped and exclaimed, “Jack Doring, you’ll do no such thing. There are tombstones in the graveyard,—you know there are!”
“Of course I know it,” Jack agreed. “But, my dear Rosie, did you ever hear of a stone, tomb or otherwise, taking legs unto itself and pursuing a young lady?”
“No-o,” Rosamond reluctantly admitted. “But graveyards are so scary.”
“We will stay on the high-road,” Adele said, wishing that they had not come, since Rosie seemed really frightened.
The cross-roads was a lonely spot. There had been a pleasant home standing on one corner, but it had recently burned, leaving only a charred ruin and a yawning cellar. In the fitful moonlight this looked very ghostly. Beyond was an old apple-orchard, and on the far corner near the fence stood—
“Look! Look!” cried Rosie, clutching Adele. “There it is! There’s the ghost. Right there—all in white!”
They all stopped and stared,—the girls startled, the boys puzzled,—for, truly enough, a tall, white figure stood silently in front of them. Then suddenly an unearthly scream rang through the air, followed by another from Rosamond.