All at once the ladder seemed to jerk itself out from under her, and with a whoop that would have done credit to any Apache brave, she landed in the middle of a great lilac bush, before she realized whether her sudden descent was caused by a collapse of the ladder, an earthquake, or one of Ned's pranks. She strongly suspected the latter; but, looking around from her dignified position in the lilac bush, she could see nothing of him, and there was nothing about the innocent-looking ladder, as it lay on the ground at the veranda steps, to indicate that it had been meddled with. But as she proceeded to alight from her elevated pedestal, she heard a chuckle somewhere in the shrubbery, which satisfied her that her suspicions were correct.
Harry came along pretty soon, and wanted Ned to join a party of children who were going down to the old mill after berries.
But Ned answered, very shortly, that he "wasn't going to do any such thing," and Harry went on, without stopping to coax him any.
That made Ned madder than ever. It was quite evident that they didn't want him, and only asked him because they couldn't very well help doing so.
"I'll have some fun with 'em," said Ned, setting off in the same direction, about half an hour afterward.
The berries the children had gone after grew in an old meadow. In this old meadow, through which a brook ran, there was a mill, which was said to be haunted, and every child was afraid to go near it in the daytime.
Ned picked his way through the bushes on the edge of the meadow, and got into the mill on the opposite side from where the children were picking berries.
So busily were they engaged in gathering the ripe fruit that they were not aware how near they were getting to the mill, till a sepulchral groan made them look up in undefined terror, and there, in the farthest shadowy corner, was something awfully ghost-like.
"Repent of your sins!" exclaimed the ghost, uttering the first and only thing he could think of; and then, with wild shouts of fright, the children started off in a stampede for the road, spilling their berries and tearing their clothes.
Little Susie Mayne lost her sunbonnet, and Will Blake lost his shoe, but they didn't dare to stop for such trifles.