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138 until I have cleared them all out, like wasps out of a hole. Mistress Ann Price and her confederates must find a fresh field for their practises; I swear they shall not continue to carry them on in that part of the coast that is under my vigilance."

"And you do not fear to tell me this, believing, as you do, that I am in league with them myself?"

"'Tis for that reason I tell you, that you may warn them they must go."

"Why did you not tell Mistress Ann herself?" asked Joan, with strange quietness. "If you think, as you say, she is concerned with the gang?"

"I will tell her when I meet her next," said Tregenna, promptly. "She has challenged me to go some night and find out for myself the truth of the tales the folks tell about the haunted barn. She"

But Joan interrupted him, with a sudden look of intense anxiety—

"She challenged you to go at night? To the great barn?"

"Ay, that she did. And I accepted her invitation."