"What is a hoodoo, Sam?" Harry Sears, whose home was in Boston, inquired teasingly.

Sam scratched his head. "I can't splain it," he announced. "But you'll know a hoodoo all right if it gets hold of you. That young lady and man'll sure have bad luck if they eat them peaches. n.o.body'll touch 'em around here."

"A hoodoo is a kind of wicked charm, like the evil eye, Harry," Madge explained, her eyes twinkling. "All we Southerners believe in it, don't we, Sam? Go and warn Miss Alden and Mr. Bolling, David. They must not bring bad luck on themselves without knowing it." Madge had not meant to order David Brewster to do what she wished; she merely requested him to take her message, as she would any one of the other boys.

David looked stolidly ahead and made Madge no answer. He was in a black humor. He had reasons of his own for not wishing to stay near the place where he had discovered Madge. He had hoped that Tom would take him down the river in the motor launch, but Tom had believed that he was doing David a favor by allowing him to remain with the others to enjoy the holiday on the farm.

"Don't you hear Miss Morton, Brewster?" shouted Harry Sears angrily.

"She told you to tell Miss Alden something." Harry Sears was always particularly disagreeable with David. To-day his anger seemed justified.

A wave of crimson swept over David's brown face. He looked as though he would have liked to leap on Harry Sears and throw him into the dust.

Only the presence of the girls and Madge's quick action deterred him.

"Never mind anybody telling Phil and Jack," she added quietly. "It's too late to save them now. Besides, I want a peep at Sam's 'ha'nted house'

and a drink of water from the ghost's well. So follow me, good people, if you are not afraid."

Phyllis and Jack Bolling led the way to the haunted house, as the place had been their discovery. The old house had been a beautiful one in its day. It was built of shingles that had mellowed to the beautiful shade of gray that only time can give. The front door hung loosely on its hinges. Spider-webs obscured the windows, with their narrow diamond panes of broken gla.s.s. Rank weeds grew everywhere and poison ivy hung in long branches from the ancient trees. To the left, where the old garden had once been, there was a glory of scarlet poppies and cornflowers growing amid the weeds. Their triumphant beauty had repeated itself year after year here in this neglected spot with no one to marvel at it.

Madge, Eleanor and Lillian gathered great bunches of the red and blue flowers. Phyllis and Jack discovered the well, with its crystal cold water. Harry Sears prowled about near the old house, with Sam at his heels. The boy was frightened, but too faithful to desert his party.

David kept at some distance from the others.

"Don't you think this a good place to eat the luncheon Mrs. Preston has given us?" Harry called out, poised on the broken steps that led up to the tumbled-down front porch. "The well is here to supply us with water and I'm jolly hungry."

The houseboat travelers formed a circle on the gra.s.s just in front of the old house. Sam spread out the luncheon. It was a warm day, the clouds hung low in the sky and the garden was humming with honey-full bees.

There was nothing mysterious about the place that Sam described as "ha'nted," except that it was entirely deserted.

Harry Sears reached out for a sandwich. "Tell us why this old house is supposed to be inhabited by ghosts, Sam," he ordered.

CHAPTER X

A GHOST STORY

"It all happened such a long time ago I can't zactly call to mind the whole story," confessed Sam. "But they was two brothers that owned this here old place. They was in the war and fought side by side. Then they lived here together, peaceful, for a long time. One of them was married and the other wasn't, but it didn't seem to make no difference. All of a sudden they fell out, and after a while one of the brothers died, mysterious like. The live man went away from here and he hasn't been heard of since. But they do say," Sam shivered and looked fearfully at the dilapidated mansion, "that the murdered man still walks around this here place at night. People even claim to see him in the daytime.

Sometimes he is by himself, and then again he brings a lady-ghost with him, but there ain't n.o.body ever lived in this here house since them two brothers fell out," Sam concluded, mightily pleased with the gruesome impression that his tale had made on his hearers.

"I should think not," agreed Lillian Seldon hastily. "I don't like ghost stories."

"I am sorry, Lillian, because I know a perfectly stunning one that is as true as history," declared Harry Sears. "If we had time, and Lillian didn't mind, I was going to tell it to you while we rested."

Madge put her arm around Lillian. "Do tell it, Harry," she begged. "I'll protect Lillian from the 'ghosties.'"

The other young people clamored for the ghost story.

Harry looked serious. "My story isn't a joke," he announced. "It hasn't a beginning or much of an end, like ordinary ghost stories, but it is true. The people to whom the ghost appeared are great friends of my mother and father. Somehow this deserted place here makes me think of the one down on Cape Cod. That house was also uninhabited for years and years, and no one knew exactly why, except that there were rumors that the place was haunted. One day a Mr. Peabody, of Boston, an old friend of ours, went down to Cape Cod to look for a home for the summer. The ghost house was what he wanted, so he rented it and left orders for it to be fixed up. He didn't know about the ghosts, though, and he wondered why the real estate agent let him have the place so cheaply. Mr. Peabody was a bachelor, so he asked two friends, Captain Smith and his wife, to occupy the house with him for the summer."

"Oh, trot out your ghosts, Harry. We are getting impatient," interposed Jack Bolling.

"The first day that Mrs. Smith was alone in the house," continued Harry, "she was in the sitting room with the door open when a fragile old lady pa.s.sed right through the hall. She disappeared into s.p.a.ce. That very same night, just at midnight, when Mr. Peabody, Captain Smith and his wife were in the library, they heard the fall of a heavy body upstairs on the second floor. Captain Smith and Mr. Peabody rushed up the steps just in time to see an old man, leading a young girl by the hand, enter a room where the door was locked. When they got the door unfastened there was no one in the room."

"Harry, don't go on with that horrible tale," entreated Lillian, looking timidly up at the dusty windows of the old house, under whose shadow they had taken refuge. The sun was no longer shining brightly, but the shade was grateful to the little circle of listeners on the gra.s.s.

"Don't be such a goose, Lillian," protested Phil. "What have Harry's Ma.s.sachusetts ghosts to do with us way down here in 'ole Virginny'?"

Lillian gave a shriek. The entire company sprang to their feet, scattering sandwiches, cakes and pickles on the gra.s.s. Inside the empty house there had been a distinct noise. Something had fallen heavily to the floor.

At the same instant David, who had been apart from the others, appeared around the corner of the house.

"Whew, I am glad it was you who made that racket, Brewster!" declared Jack Bolling, grinning rather foolishly.

The young people looked at one another with relieved expressions.

"I'm so grateful it isn't night time," sighed Eleanor.

"I didn't make any noise," declared David, seeming rather confused. No one paid any attention to his reply. They were again cl.u.s.tered about Harry Sears, begging him to go on with his ghost story.

"Things went from bad to worse in the house I was telling you about,"

continued Harry. "Every night, at the same hour, the same noise was heard and the old man and the girl reappeared. Why, once Mr. Peabody was sitting in his garden, just as we are doing here"--Harry glanced across the old garden. Was it a branch that stirred behind the tangle of evergreen bushes? The day was very still--"and he saw the same old man walk by him and enter his house through a closed side door. After awhile Mrs. Smith became ill from the strain and she sent for a physician who had been living in the neighborhood a long time. The doctor did not wish to come to see Mrs. Smith just at first. When he did he related his own experience in the same house years before. He had just moved into the neighborhood, as a young physician, when one night, at about midnight, he was aroused by some one ringing his bell. An old man asked the doctor to come with him at once, as a young girl, his grand-daughter, was dangerously ill. Dr. Block went with the old gentleman. He found the young girl, dying with consumption, in a room on the second floor of a house. An old lady was with her, but the doctor saw no one else. He wrote a prescription, put it on the mantel-piece and said he would come back in the morning."

Harry stopped talking. A distant roll of thunder interrupted him.

"Do hurry, Harry; we must be off!" exclaimed Jack Bolling.

"The next morning the doctor went back to the same house. It was closed and boarded up, and the caretaker told the physician that no one had lived in the house for many years. The doctor was indignant, so the caretaker opened the door and let Dr. Block into the house, so he could see for himself that it was empty. The hall was covered with dust, but a single pair of footprints could be seen going from the hall door to the bedroom on the second floor. The old man had left no tracks. The physician entered the room, which was empty. There was no old man, no old woman, no sick girl, not even a bed, but"--Harry made a dramatic pause--"the doctor walked over to the mantel-piece and there lay the prescription that he had written the night before!"

"Oh, my! Oh, my!" exclaimed Lillian. She was on her feet, pointing with trembling fingers toward a window of the old house which was back of the rest of the party. "I am sure I saw a face at that window," she cried.

"No one will believe me, but I did, I did! It was a girl's face, too, very white and thin. Please take me away from here."

Madge slipped her arms about the frightened Lillian. For an instant she almost believed that she, too, had seen the specter that must have been born of Lillian's overwrought imagination as a result of the ghost stories she had just heard.

Madge and Lillian led the way down the tangled path from the haunted house. They were some distance from the others when the little captain discovered that David was following them. She had not looked at him, not spoken to him since he had so rudely refused her simple request.

Now she walked on, with her head in the air. Lillian did not like David, but now she was almost sorry for the boy: she knew the weight of Madge's displeasure. "David Brewster wants to speak to you, Madge, dear," she whispered in her friend's ear.

Madge made no answer, nor glanced behind her.

"Miss Morton!"--David's face was very white; he was bitterly ashamed--"I am sorry, beastly sorry, I was so rude to you this morning. I was angry, not with you, but about something else. I don't seem to know how to control my temper. Perhaps it is because I am not a gentleman. I would do anything I knew how to serve you." David was not looking at Madge, but on the ground in front of him.

Madge's expression cleared as though by magic. "Never mind, David," she said impulsively. "Let's not think anything more about it. I lose my temper quite as often as any one else. And don't say it is because you are not a gentleman; you _are_ a gentleman, if you wish to be."

The other young people came hurrying on. The clouds were now heavy overhead and the thunder seemed ominously near. The lightning began to streak in forked flames across the summer sky.

"I think everybody had better run for the farm," suggested Phyllis. "Sam says it is only a short distance away."

No one cared to linger any longer in the deserted grounds. The story of the tragic old house, oddly mixed as it was with Harry Sears's ghostly tale and Lillian's fancied apparition of a girl's white face at the window, did not leave a pleasant recollection of the morning spent near Sam's "ha'nted house."