Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/62

 no need to point as they stood upon the top of the ridge.

Loutrelle nodded, his eyes narrowing a little as he tried to see it better through the glare. "There is a house upon it?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes; near the south end; part of that snow upon which the sun is shining must be on the roof of the house."

"But why's the house there?" he demanded. He had asked this before but not with the present amazement.

"Of course it's quite different in summer."

"But you said it's never been occupied, summer or winter."

"No; never."

"Except possibly," he said, glancing at her and away to the house again, "by the dead."

He spoke in a queer, neutral tone, neither quite seriously nor at all lightly. She had never heard any one say "the dead" in just that manner. It did not suggest that he had taken the revelations in the letters more earnestly than he had admitted; nor did it hint at greater scepticism. It betrayed only an open mind and caused her to consider the long experience which this young man, who had enlisted after the Marne and fought four years, must have had with the dead.

"So you heard stories on the train?" Ethel asked.

"Yes; but I wasn't thinking particularly of them. Being with Indians when I was a boy, I was brought up to believe in spirits—manedos and Nibanaba—everywhere. When I left the Indians, the hardest thing I had to do was to rid myself of superstitions—to try to stop believing ghosts were always about in