"Well, I came to look into the matter of bird-feeding stations for the sanctuary Dr. Thandu wants to establish here, and so I decided I might also take in the Hall. It's quite a place."
"Killing two birds with one stone," quoted Terry tritely.
He waved a hand to them and disappeared back into the strange old house.
It was a little farther to the small grove, where the holly trees and bushes grew, than Arden realized and it was perhaps ten minutes after their good-bye to the ghost-hunter that the two girls found a thicket sufficiently large to ensure a good supply of branches with their lovely red berries and dark, prickly, glossy leaves. Holly is always just holly; hard, sharp, but magnificent on its trees.
They had good pocket knives and soon cut off a quantity--more, Arden suggested, than they could carry even with the help of Mr. Pangborn, when Terry, glancing off toward a little clearing, suddenly cried:
There was something in the tone of her voice that startled Arden. But she managed to ask, as she whirled quickly around:
"A figure in red!" whispered Terry, pointing. "There--through the trees--someone in red--moving. Oh, perhaps it's the ghost of Patience Howe! She is always seen wearing a red cloak, you know!"
Arden dropped the holly branches from her hand as she looked toward where Terry pointed.
Something was moving! Red, in all that deep, dark clump of evergreens!
Terry and Arden drew closer together, instinctively, for mutual protection. It was uncanny to see this strange, scarlet figure capering about in the little clearing, seen through a screen of fir trees and against a background of gleaming white snow.
"The ghost of Patience Howe," murmured Arden, recalling the story Granny had told--recalling what the men had said about seeing an apparently dead woman, in a red cloak, on a bed in the old Hall. And that figure had mysteriously vanished.
Now it was in sight again--at least, some figure was there. There was no mistaking it, for it was too plain to be anything else but a moving elfin thing.
"Oh," whispered Terry, "do you think, Arden, that Harry could have disturbed it?"
"This ghost--I mean, perhaps he came upon the place where it hides in the house and it ran out--no, ghosts don't run, they sort of float, like smoke, don't they? Oh, Arden, I'm frightened!"