"I know," cried Hazel. "A banshee is a ghost, that the peasants in Ireland believe in. It stands outside their windows at night and wails dismally.

Its appearance is supposed to foretell the death of a member of the family."

"Quite right," replied Harriet. "Now listen to my story. Once upon a time there lived a family of poor people in County Mooreland in Ireland. With them lived their beautiful child Muriel. Now the fairies and the banshees, the wood nymphs and the sprites coveted this beautiful child Muriel because they knew she would make a good fairy. But they dared not approach the hut where Muriel made her home, in the daytime. At night little Muriel was sound asleep behind closed doors. There was no way for the banshees and the wood nymphs and the sprites to get into the house and take her while she slept, for there always was a fire in the fireplace. As everybody knows a fairy cannot pass through flames without singeing her wings----"

"Why didn't thhe wear water wingth?" piped Tommy Thompson.

"Every night the fairies used to perch in the flowers and under the shamrock that grew in Muriel's door yard, waiting and hoping to catch the little one and kidnap her."

"Some one should have called the police," ventured Margery.

"If the sprites could reach Muriel," went on Harriet, ignoring Margery's flippant remark, "they could quickly transform her into something else and in that manner get her away. You see these were bad fairies and gnomes and sprites and things."

"Yeth," agreed Tommy. "I thee."

"Well, one night a very powerful banshee came along and asked them what they were doing there. They told it they were waiting for the beautiful child Muriel that they might bear her away, but that they could not get to her.

"'Oho, aha!' cried the banshee. 'I have a plan. I will call upon the friend of my people, the west wind, to blow hard. Stand close and when the door of the cottage blows open see that you enter by one door but do not go out by the other. The west wind will blow thrice, then will die away.

It is for you to gather the child then. I can summon the wind but once.'"

"It thertainly had thome confidenthe in itthelf," observed Grace Thompson, nodding her head.

"The fairies and the gnomes and the sprites and the banshees gathered about the door of the shack," continued the first ghost, "Suddenly they heard a wild, weird wailing off on the moor. The ghostly little conspirators trembled with fear, for these midnight wailings, these moaning winds across the moor boded no good for all of their kind. It meant that the spirits of evil were abroad.

"Suddenly a mighty gale struck the little house, causing it to tremble from cellar to roof. Then the front door burst open with a crash. The west wind with an awful wail and roar rushed into the shack, carrying with it the fairies and the gnomes and the sprites and the banshees. No sooner were they inside the cottage than the other door burst open and all the fairies and the gnomes and the sprites were hurled out and carried away on the great gale. But one little banshee had found lodgment on a beam where it clung until the gale had passed.

"And what do you think it did?"

"Carried away the child?" suggested a voice.

"Did you ever hear of anything so perfectly ridiculous?" exclaimed Cora Kidder.

"I gueth it went to thleep and fell off into the fire," suggested Tommy.

"No. It waited until the gale had passed, then dropping down touched the sleeping child with its magic wand, whereupon Muriel became a butterfly.

The banshees carried the butterfly away with them and in their home she grew to be as beautiful a banshee as she had been a child. But she grew and grew. There was no stopping her. She grew almost as rapidly as Jack's beanstalk by which he climbed to the home of the giant."

"What a fright she must have been," interrupted a voice.

"As she grew she began to hate the banshees who had taken her from her home and made her become like them. She determined to avenge herself. This she did by making war upon all the other banshees. So powerful was she and so familiar, too, with their hiding places in the flowers that she had little difficulty in clearing the country of the little pests. Those who were not killed were driven from the country, all of which accounts for there being no banshees in Ireland now. But they are to be found in some other parts of the world."

"Are--are there any over here?" questioned a timid voice from among the girls.

"I have never seen any," replied Harriet. "Still, we do not know. A banshee might fly into any one of our tents on a dark night and change us into butterflies or banshees or something of that sort, and we wouldn't know anything about it until we had been changed. When we woke up we should be in so different a form that we shouldn't know ourselves if we were to look into a mirror."

"I know who that draped figure is now," exclaimed Patricia. "It's that hateful Harriet Burrell. Isn't she silly and presuming?"

"Yes," was the reply. "I am amazed that Mrs. Livingston allows her to be so forward. She and that McCarthy girl make an excellent team. One is as tiresome as the other."

"I have heard," continued the ghost, "that this great and powerful banshee came to America to look for the descendants of the banshees who made her become one of them. It has even been hinted that she has been seen in the Pocono Woods."

"Oh, my gracious!" exclaimed Hazel, glancing about her apprehensively.

"What if we should see her? I'd die of fright, I know I should."

"Fiddle! Who ith afraid of a banthhee?" jeered Grace. "Now if I thaw that banthhee I'd jutht thtep on her with my heel, tho!" She dug her little heel into the ground to show how she would crush the banshee.

Harriet might have been observed to gaze off into the forest almost apprehensively herself now and then. There was a quizzical smile on her face, but it was hidden by the white mask she wore.

Suddenly she cried out: "Oh, girls! girls!" Then pointed directly over their heads into the forest. "The banshee! The banshee! Look! Oh, look!"

Tommy sat shivering, not daring to turn her head. A few girls mustered up sufficient courage to look behind them. Then a series of wild screams rent the air. There was a mad rush for the protection of the tents, in which even the guardians--or nearly all of them--joined. What they had seen had sent a thrill of terror through every girl that had gazed upon the terrifying sight.

Tommy Thompson rose and stood trembling. "Thave me!" moaned Tommy. "I'm tho thcared!"

[Illustration: "It's the Banshee!"]

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAYING OF A SPOOK

"It's the banshee! It's the banshee!" screamed a score of voices.

What they had seen had been enough to startle the bravest person. A figure had suddenly appeared out of the gloom, a huge towering figure that looked to the startled girls to be almost as high as the trees themselves, though it was not more than eight feet tall. The figure was clad in long, flowing white robes that hung gracefully to its feet. Two arms almost as long as the figure was high, were waving frantically in the air. The face was small and as white as the garb of the strange weird creature. It did, indeed, look as though it might be the fabled banshee from the moors of County Mooreland.

"Woo-oo-oo," wailed the apparition.

"Come back, girls!" cried Mrs. Livingston. "Come back, I tell you!" The Chief Guardian had herself been startled at first. Standing their ground were half a dozen other girls, among them was Hazel Holland. Patricia Scott and Cora Kidder had long since retired to a safe distance from the apparition.

The words of the Guardian somehow seemed to reassure the trembling Tommy.

Then, too, she saw that Harriet did not run. Harriet had thrown herself upon the ground and was sitting with her head in hands, her shoulders shaking. What Tommy did not know was that Harriet was not shaking with fear, but with laughter.

The apparition was slowly approaching the little group of girls, with arms waving and the weird "woo-oo-oo" becoming louder and louder. Two of the half dozen who had stood their ground now turned and fled precipitately.

Tommy Thompson still stood her ground, with trembling limbs. All at once her eyes narrowed. A crafty expression took the place of the look of fear on her small face. Then to the amazement of the girls who still remained, Tommy crept cautiously around until she got to the rear of the approaching figure. Now and then as she thought the giant banshee was about to turn around, Tommy would leap back as lightly as a cat.

Mrs. Livingston forgot her dignity and laughed until her eyes were dimmed with tears.

The little girl made a sudden dive and a grab. Her fingers closed over a piece of the banshee's robe. She felt something else in her grasp and gave a mighty tug.

There was a shrill scream from the banshee. Harriet sprang away believing that the apparition was about to fall on her. The girls fled. This was too much for them. They did not think far enough to realize that what they had heard was a most human scream and that it could have come only from a human throat.

Down came the giant banshee in a mighty fall.

"Save me!" wailed the gigantic falling figure.

It was now too late to do anything toward saving the luckless banshee. The drapery fell away in its struggles to right itself and the terrified apparition perched upon a pair of stilts fell sprawling close to the fire which by this time had burned very low, else the banshee's robes might have been permanently singed.