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All was confusion at once, and one of the young men rushed out for Caleb Budlong, the doctor, who lived not far away. When things settled down to quiet again and Miranda had been lifted to the kitchen couch and restored with cold water and other stimulants, David had time to discover the absence of Lawrence Billings, though nobody else seemed to notice.

They all tiptoed away from the kitchen at Dr. Budlong’s suggestion, and left Miranda to lie quiet and recover. He said he didn’t believe in these new-fangled things, they were bad for the system, and got people’s nerves all stirred up, especially women. He wouldn’t allow a woman to be put under mesmeric influence if he had anything to say about it. All women were hysterical, and that was doubtless the matter with Miranda.

The company looked at one another astonished. Who had ever suspected Miranda of having nerves, and going into hysterics? And yet she had proclaimed a murderer in their midst!

They turned to one another and began to converse in low mysterious tones while Miranda lay on the couch in the kitchen with closed eyelids and inward mirth. Presently, as Dr. Budlong counted her pulse and gave her another spoonful of stimulant, she drew a long sigh and turned her face to the wall; he, thinking she was dropping to sleep, tiptoed into the sitting-room and closed the kitchen door gently behind him.

Miranda was on the alert at once, turning her head quickly to measure the width of the crack of the door. She yield herself quiet for a full minute, and then slipped softly from her couch across the kitchen with the step of a sylph, snatched a mussed tablecloth from the shelf in the pantry where she had put it when she helped Hannah clear off the dinner table, and wrapping it quickly around her and over her head she went out of the back door.

Every movement was light and quick. She paused a second on the back stoop to get her bearings, then sped with swift light steps toward the barn-door, which was open. A young moon was riding high in the heavens making weird battle with the clouds, and the light of the lantern shone from the open barn-door. Miranda could see the long shadow of a man hitching up a horse with quick, nervous fingers. Lawrence Billings was preparing to take Julia Thatcher home.

Miranda approached the barn, and suddenly emerged into the light in full view of the startled horse just as Lawrence Billings stepped behind him to fasten the traces. The horse, having been roused from a peaceful slumber and not being yet fully awake, beheld the apparition with a snort, and without regard to the man or the unfastened traces reared on his hind legs and attempted to climb backwards into the carryall. There they stood, side by side, the man and the horse, open mouthed, wide nostriled, with protruding eyes; the smoky lantern by the barn-door shedding a flickering light over the whole and casting grotesque shadows on the dusty door.

Miranda, fully realizing her advantage, stood in the half-light of the moon in her fantastic and drapery and waved her tableclothed arms, one forefinger wrapped tightly in the linen pointing straight at the frightened man, while she intoned in hollow sounds the words:

“Confess—to-night—o—you—will—die!”

Lawrence Billings’s yellow hair rose straight on end and cold creeps went down his back. He snorted like the horse in his fright.

The white apparition moved slowly nearer, nearer to the patch of light in the barn-door, and its voice wailed and rose like the wind in November, but the words it spoke were clear and distinct.

“Confess—at—once—or—misfortune—will—overtake—you! Moon—smite—you!—Dogs—bite—you!—Enoch Taylor’s speerit—hant you! Yer mother’s ghost pass before—you--!”

The white arms waved dismally, and the apparition took another step toward him. Then with a yell that might have been heard all the round, Lawrence Billings made a wild dash past her to the back door.

“Food pizen you!—Sleep—fright—you!—Earth swaller—you!” screamed the merciless apparition flying after him, and the horse, having reached the limit of his self-control clattered out into the open and cavorted around the garden until his nerves were somewhat relieved.

Lawrence Billings burst in upon the assembled company in the best parlor with wild eyes and dishevelled hair, and was suddenly confronted with the fact that these people did not believe in ghosts and apparitions. In the warm, bright room with plenty of companions about, he felt the foolishness of telling what he had just seen. His nerve deserted him. He could not face them all and suggest that he had seen a ghost, and so he blurted out an incoherent sentence about his horse. It was frightened at something white in the yard and had run away.

Instantly all hands hurried out to help catch the horse, Lawrence Billings taking care to keep close to the others, and looking fearsomely about the shadowy yard as he stepped forth again from shelter.

Miranda, meantime, had slipped into the kitchen and taken to her couch most decorously, the tablecloth folded neatly close at hand in case she needed it again, and was apparently resting quietly when Hannah tiptoed in to see if she needed anything.

“I guess I shan’t trouble you much longer,” murmured Miranda sleepily. “I don’t feel near so bad now. Shouldn’t wonder ef I could make out to git back home in a half hour er so. What’s all the racket about, Hannah?”

“Lawrence Billings’s horse got loose,” said Hannah. “He’s a fool anyway. He says it saw something white on the clothes line. There isn’t a thing out there, you know yourself Mirandy. He’s asked Dr. Budlong to take Julia Thatcher and her aunt home in his carryall. He says his horse won’t be safe to drive after all this. It’s perfect nonsense; Julia could have walked with him. Mother wanted to ride with Dr. Budlong, and now she’ll have to stay all night and I just got the spare-bed sheets done up clean and put away. I don’t see what you had to go and get into things for to-night, anyhow, Mirandy. You might have known it wasn’t a thing for you to meddle with. All this fuss just because you got people worked up about that murder. Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut about it? It couldn’t do any good now anyway. Say, Mirandy, did you really see any one or hear them say all that stuff?”

“What stuff, Hannah?” said Miranda sleepily. “I disremember what’s ben happenin’. My head feeks queer. Do you s’pose twould hurt me to go home to my own bed?”

“No,” said Hannah crossly, “it’s the best place you could be. I wish I hadn’t asked you to come. I might have known you’d cut up some shine,-- you always did, --but I thought you were grown up enough to act like other folks out to a tea-party,” and with this kind and cousinly remark she slammed into her sitting-room again to make what she could of her excited guests.

Miranda, meanwhile, laystill and listened, and when she made out from the sounds that Jula Thatcher and her aunt had driven off in Dr. Budlong’s carryall with his family, and that all the ladies who had not already departed were in the spare-room putting on their wraps and bonnets, she stole forth softly, the tablecloth hidden under her cloak,--for she had taken the precaution early in the evening to hang her own wraps behind the kitchen door,--and took her way down the street, hovering in the shadows until she saw that Lawrence Billings was coming on behind her.

He was quite near to David and Marcia when he passed where she hid behind a lilac bush on the edge of Judge Waitstill’s yard.

“Moon smite yeh,--stars blight yeh,” murmured Miranda under her breath, but almost in his ear, and flicked the tablecloth a time or two in the moonlight as he looked back fearfully.

Lawrance hastened his steps until he was close behind another group of homeward-bound guests. Miranda slipped from bush to bush, keeping in the shadows of the trees, until she made sure that he was bout to turn off down the road to his own isolated house. Then she slid under a fence and sped across a cornfield. The night was damp and a fine mist like smoke arose from the ground in wreaths of fog and hid her as she ran, but when the young man opened his gate he saw in the changing lights and shadows of the cloud-and-moon-lit night a white figure with waving arms standing on his doorstep and moving slowly, steadily down to meet him.

With a gasp of terror he turned and fled back to the main street of the village, the ghost following a short distance behind, with light, uncanny tread and waving arms like wreaths of mist. It was too much for poor Lawrence Billings. Just in front of David Spafford’s house he stumbled and fell flat—and here was the ghost all but upon him! With a cry of despair he scrambled to his feet and took refuge on the Spafford stoop, clacking the door-knocker loudly in his fright. This was better than Miranda could have hoped. She held her ghostly part by the gate-post till David opened the door, then slipped around to a loose pantry shutter and soon made good her entrance into the house. Stepping lightly she took her station near to a crack of a door where she could hear all that went on between David and his late caller. She heard with exultation the reluctant confession, the abject humility of voice, and cringing plea for mercy. Whatever happened now somebody besides herself knew that Allan Whitney was not a murderer. Her heart swelled ith triumph as she listened to the frightened voice telling how a shot had struck the old man instead of the rabbit it was intended for, and how he had run to him and done everything he knew how to resuscitate his victim but without avail. In terrible fright he had started for the road, and there met Allan Whitney, who had come back with him and worked over the old man a while, and then told him to go home and say nothing about it, that he would take the gun and if anybody made a fuss he would take the blame; that it didn’t matter about him anyway, nobody cared what became of him, but Lawrence had his mother to look out for. The man declared that he hadn’t wanted to do it, putting Allan in a position like that, but when he thought of his mother, of course he had to; and anyhow he had hoped Allan would get away all right, and he did. It hadn’t seemed so bad for Allan. He was likely as well off somewhere else as here, and he, Lawrence, had his mother to look after.”

There was no spectre in this room, and Lawrence Billings was getting back his self-confidence. All the excuses with which he had bolstered himself during the years came flocking back to comfort him as he tried to justify himself before this clear-eyed man for his cowardly hiding behind another.

Something of the contempt that Miranda felt for the weak fellow was manifest in David Spafford’s tone as he asked question after question and brought out little by little the whole story of the night of the murder and Lawrence’s cowardly part in it. Somehow as David talked his sin was made more manifest, and his excuses dropped away from him. He saw his wickedness in allowing another fellow-being, no matter how willing, to walk all these years under the name of murderer to shield him. He lifted a blanched face and fearful eyes to his judge when David at last arose and said:

“Well, now the first thing to do is to go straight to Mr. Whitney. He ought not to be allowed to think another hour that his son has committed a crime. Then we will go to Mr. Heath—”

Lawrence Billings uttered something between a whine and a groan. His face grew whiter and his eyes seemed to fairly stand out.

“What’ll we have to go to them for?” he demanded angrily.”Ain’t I confessed? Ain’t that enough? They can’t hang me after all these years, can they? I ain’t going to anybody else. I’ll leave town if you say so, but I ain’t going to do any more confessing.”

“No, you will not leave town,” said David quietly, laying a strong hand on the trembling shoulder, “and you most certainly will go and confess to those two men. It it the only possible way to make what amends you can for the past. You have put this matter in my hands by coming to me with it, and I cannot let you go until it is handed over to the proper authorities.”

“I came to you because I thought you’d be just and merciful,” whined the wretch.

“And so I will as far as in me lies. Justice demands that you confess this matter fully and that the whole thing be investigated. Come——!”