"I'd keep going to school just as long as ever I could. And then I'd go all over the world--to Japan and Singapore and India and to the Nile and Venice and Switzerland and Gibraltar----" her tongue stumbled in its effort to circle the globe. "Oh--_everywhere_. I'd want to see everything."

How many young hearts have dreamed of such adventure!

"And yet," Jerry went on, "if I had all the gold in the world right in my hand I don't believe I could make myself go so far away from Sweetheart and Little-Dad and the dogs and--and Sunnyside!"

"Oh," Gyp quickly settled such an obstacle. "If you had all the gold in the world you could take 'em with you."

At that moment they were startled by a loud thud in the hall beneath them. The Bible crashed to the floor. Each girl instinctively clapped her hand to her mouth to smother a cry. Then they laughed.

"What _ever_ do you suppose it was? Hark--I hear footsteps." Gyp spoke in sepulchral tones.

"They're going away," whispered Jerry, relieved. "Goodness, how it frightened me!" Jerry leaned over to lift the poor Bible. From its pages had dropped a long envelope. It lay, white and smooth, the address side upward, on the dusty floor.

"Look, Gyp--a _letter_! It must have been in this Bible."

Gyp took the envelope gingerly.

"It's addressed to father! It's never been opened. It looks as though it had _just_ been written! Jerry--_that's Uncle Peter's handwriting_!"

Jerry stared at the envelope--except that the letter had been pressed very flat, it did indeed look as though it had just been written.

"Isn't it _creepy_?" Gyp shivered. "Do you believe in ghosts? _Could_ Uncle Peter Westley have come here and written that--just--maybe, _last night_?"

It was a horrible thought--Jerry tried not to entertain it. But the wailing wind made it seem possible!

"What'll we do with it?" Gyp had laid it on the table.

"Let's put it back in the Bible"--that seemed a safe place--"and take it home. Maybe there is an important message in it that someone ought to see! But I wish we'd never come here this afternoon."

"And see how dark it is--it's getting late. Let's let these other things go." Jerry's voice, betraying her eagerness to quit the tower room, made Gyp feel creepier than ever.

Each took a corner of the ghostly envelope and slipped it between the pages of the Bible.

"There--it's safe enough now. We can take turns carrying it." The girls hurriedly donned their outer wraps. Then, without one backward glance, they tiptoed down the narrow stair. But, to their amazement, the panel at the foot of the stair would not budge. Vainly they shoved, and pressed their shoulders against the solid oak. Breathless, Gyp sat down on the Bible.

"_What'll_ we do?"

"We'll have to shout and bring someone--'cause we can't open the other door."

"Then Old Crow will know our secret," wailed Gyp.

"But we don't want to stay here all _night_!"

Gyp gave one swift, backward glance up the secret stairway to the haunted tower room.

"No--no! Well, let's shout together."

They shouted and shouted, with all the strength of their young lungs.

But Old Crow, who really was Mr. Albert Crowe, for many years janitor of Lincoln School, had gone, ten minutes earlier, in his Sunday best, to attend the annual banquet of the Janitors' Association and his assistant had made his last rounds of the School, so that the shouts of the girls echoed and re-echoed vainly through the deserted halls of Highacres.

Jerry leaned, exhausted, against the wall.

"I don't believe it's a bit of use--not a soul can hear us."

"What'll we do?" asked Gyp again--Gyp, who was usually so resourceful.

"If we only hadn't found that old letter we never'd have _thought_ of ghosts and we wouldn't have minded a bit being shut in the tower room."

Jerry commenced to laugh nervously. "Gyp, maybe you don't _know_ you're sitting on the Bible!" Gyp sprang up.

"I don't think it's anything to laugh about! Not me, I mean, but--but having to stay all night--up _there_!"

Jerry started back up the stairway.

"Come on," she encouraged. "_I'm_ not afraid. If there _are_ ghosts I want to see one." Gyp followed with the Bible. The tower room was shadowy in the fast-falling twilight. The girls tried to open each of the small windows; though they rattled busily enough they would not budge.

Gyp sat down resignedly on the window-seat. "We'll just sit here until we're rescued. Only--no one will _guess_ where we are."

"I think it's a grand adventure," declared Jerry valiantly.

"If we only hadn't begun to _think_ about ghosts! You never can see them, anyway--you just feel them. Is that the wind? Sit close to me, Jerry."

Jerry sat very close to her chum and they gripped hands; it was easier, that way, to endure the dreadful silence.

"I'm hungry," whispered Gyp, after awhile. Then, a moment later, "Did you hear something, Jerry--like a long, long sigh?"

Jerry nodded and Gyp drew closer to her, shivering.

"Of course," she murmured in a voice lowered to the etiquette of a haunted room. "_You're_ not frightened because you didn't _know_ Uncle Peter. If I was afraid of him when he was _alive_ what----"

"Sh-h-h!" commanded Jerry. Uncle Peter's ghost might be hovering very close to them and might hear! Gyp's words did not sound exactly respectful.

Jerry tried to talk of everyday things but it was of no use--what mattered the color of Sue Knox's new sweater when the very air tingled with spirits?

"_Oh-h!_" Gyp clutched Jerry in a spasm of fright. "_Something_ grabbed my elbow----" her voice was scarcely audible. "Jerry--_true_ as I live--cross my heart! Long--bony--fingers--just like Uncle Peter's used to feel--_Oh-h_!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE LETTER

"I don't understand----" Mrs. Westley lifted anxious eyes from her soup-plate. "Gyp _always_ telephones! And _both_ of them----"

"I saw Peggy Lee and Pat Everett coming home from the dressmaker's and she wasn't with them," offered Isobel. "But she's all right, mother."

"Such dreadful things happen----"