“It was there, and when we find the one who has that, we’ll find the ghost. Did you meet anyone in the halls?”
“Not a soul.”
“I am terribly disappointed, then, though I feel sure that I know who it is.”
“Who?” asked Paulina, silent until now.
“Perhaps I ought not to say surely till I actually find her.”
Then Jannet asked what rooms were vacant and where some one could hide, and she found that they had made a tour of them all, looking for her. “But did you look in Jan’s den?” she asked.
Finding that they had not been on the attic floor at all, she asked them to follow her. Locking and bolting her door, she led the way to the attic by the new route of the secret stairs. It was true,—the filmy ghost dress was gone. Thoroughly they searched the attic, quietly, too, Nell standing at the attic door on guard. Then Paulina turned on the light in the upper hall by Jan’s den and unlocked Jan’s door. She understood dimly why Jannet had wanted to search the attic again, but she could not see why it was necessary to enter here.
Another disappointment checked Jannet’s search. She felt so sure that the ghost would be found here, spending the rest of the night. The room was empty, so far as human occupancy was concerned.
Jannet stepped in and looked around at the evidences of Jan’s mechanical turn of mind. But with a little exclamation she pointed to the bed. Some one had been sitting there, and there lay a tangled wisp of something on the floor, showing under the long cover which hung over the side of Jan’s cot.
“She was too much in a hurry,” triumphantly said Jannet, kneeling down on the floor and reaching under the bed. Nell, thinking that the ghost was found, drew back with a little squeal. But Jannet drew out only the filmy mass of the ghost’s dress.