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294 The substance there was shadow here. Common sense was gossamer, the fairy tale the tangible nugget of gold. The superstitions at which the world represented by Aunt Abigail would have so scornfully sniffed, this moment seemed the logical and immutable laws of this hauntingly lovely island.

As she tried to escape from the swarm of fancies, the vision of the haunted house on the mountainside flashed before her. An uncontrollable curiosity piqued her. Why hadn't she solved that mystery, at least! Even as she rose, a figure swung down the old overgrown pathway, that led like a clogged vein from the heart of the green forest. The figure, too, carried a spade over his shoulder. The girl turned, half-expecting to see one of the villainous voyagers of the black yacht.

It was the young man himself! The tenant of the haunted house, who had chanted the requiem so sorrowfully and so musically.

Behind him shambled a second figure,—the giant mute, his huge, loose-jointed six feet six looking altogether ludicrous in the faded blue livery with the tarnished gilt trappings. Set in a face as dead black, the girl thought, as the mire under the reeds of the Salthaven marshes, his eyes had the dull unhappy stare of one who silently protests against his affliction. The latter was all too evident, for his cavernous mouth, forced by the abnormally flattened nose to gape open for breath, showed only the grotesque root of a tongue. Still his uncouthness did not frighten her as the polished, well-groomed, but sinister, personage who led that other band.