The runabout chugged up the road presently. “Ben waiting long?” the freckled Dick asked with a cheery shamelessness.
“No, I’ve been looking the house over. Wonderful old place, isn’t it?”
“Don’t care much for it myself,” Dick answered. “I don’t like anything old—old houses or that old truck the summer folks are always buying. Things can’t be too new or up-to-date for me.”
Lindsay did not appear at first to hear this; he was still bemused from the experiences of the afternoon. But as they approached the Arms, he emerged from his daze with a belated reply. “Well, I suppose a lot of people feel the way you do,” he remarked vaguely. “Mr. Hyde tells me that the Murray place hasn’t been let for fifteen years. I expect the rest of the people around here don’t like old houses.”
“Oh, that ain’t the reason the Murray house hasn’t let,” Dick explained with the scorn of rustic omniscience. “They say it’s haunted.”
“What rent do they ask for the Murray house?” Lindsay asked Hyde that evening.
Hyde scratched the back of his head. His face contracted with that mental agony which afflicts the Yankee when an exact statement is demanded of him. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if you could get it for two hundred dollars the season,” he finally brought out.
Lindsay considered, but apparently not Hyde’s answer; for presently he came out with a different question. “Why do they say it’s haunted?”
Hyde emitted a short contemptuous laugh. “Did you ever hear of any house in the country that’s been empty for a number of years that worn’t considered haunted?”
“No,” Lindsay admitted. “I am disappointed, though. I had hoped you would be able to tell me about the ghost.”