She, hastening to answer it, found a tall man, wearing a very heavy beard and mustache, standing there.
"Good-evening," he said, with a polite inclination of the head; "is my—is Mrs. Keith in?"
Celestia Ann staggered back, turning very pale in the light of the lamp that hung suspended from the ceiling. "I—I should say I knowed that voice if—if the feller that owned it hadn't been killed dead by the Injuns more'n three years back; leastways so we hearn tell," she gasped. "Be ye Rupert Keith, or his ghost?"
"I am no ghost, Celestia Ann," he said with a smile. "Reports are sometimes quite untrue, as was the one you speak of."
She grasped his hand, and burst out sobbing for very joy.
"There, there!" he said kindly, "I am afraid mother will hear and be alarmed. If she should hurry out and find me here—so unexpectedly, it might be more than she could well bear."
"Yes, she'd ought to be prepared; 'specially as she's had one great surprise a'ready to day in Don's comin'—"
"What, is Don here? just returned?" he cried. "Oh, but that is good news! They're in the parlor, I think; I'll go into the sitting-room and get you to call Dr. Landreth out (the rest will suppose he's wanted to see a patient), and he can prepare my mother."
"A first-rate plan, Mr. Rupert," said Celestia Ann. Waiting till he reached the door of the sitting-room, she opened that of the parlor.
"Doctor," she said, "there's a man out here a-wantin' to speak to ye."