“An apparition!” I cried.  “That’s strange!  Where did the boy see it?”

“He couldn’t have seen it, Mr. Edmund, as you must know very well, with your heducation and experience.  He was running home in the moonlight and thought he saw some figure in the old mill, which, of course, he says must have been a ghost.”

“A ghost at the old mill!” I laughed heartily myself at the notion.  “It couldn’t have been poor old Archie.  It’s not like him to terrify his neighbors in that way.”

“I gave the girl a good talking to,” continued Penny. (I did not doubt it!) “‘Read your Penny Catechism,’ I said, ’and see how strong it is against dealing with the Devil by consulting spiritualists, and don’t let me hear another word about it.’”

It seemed rather hard on poor Elsie, who was, beyond doubt, innocent of any such forbidden practices.  But I refrained from comment, for I wanted to hear more about the happarition.

But Penny could not be drawn out.  She professed herself so disgusted at Elsie’s “superstition” that I could get no coherent account of what Aleck was supposed to have seen.  So I left her to vent her wrath on the defenceless vegetables, and determined to seek a more copious source of information.

Willy and Bell would be capable of second-hand descriptions only, so I resolved to approach the fountain-head and interrogate Aleck in person.  I found the youth in the garden of Fanellan farm, evidently just passing the time by a cursory pruning of berry bushes.  He had on his Sunday suit, and was unusually smartened up for a weekday; for it was but natural that neighbors might be expected to drop in for information as to the supernatural manifestations he had experienced, and it was well to be prepared.  He was a fresh-looking, fair-haired lad of eighteen or thereabouts.  I had often noticed him on Sundays among the gathering under the pine-trees near the church door, but had never spoken to him.

Aleck had not expected so illustrious a visitor as “the priest’s brother,” and, though evidently gratified by my interest, was so painfully shy that it would have needed an expert barrister to draw out any satisfactory information from so bashful a witness.  Luckily his mother had espied me from the window, and promptly appeared on the scene, and by means of her judicious prompting the youth was induced to tell his tale.

It appeared that Aleck was out on the night in question at the unusual hour of twelve.  He had been “bidden,” as his mother explained, to a marriage in the neighborhood, and his father had allowed him to accept the invitation on the condition of his return home by midnight.  As is not unusual in such cases, the attractions of the dance had led the youth to postpone his departure, minute by minute, until it was questionable whether he could possibly reach home by the appointed time, even if he ran his best.  Consequently he took all the short cuts he knew, and one of them led him by the old mill.