“I should think it was hardly the proper thing for a young lady to do at this time of night,” he said superciliously.  “But you know best,—­you know the people here.”

Polly’s cheeks and eyes flamed.  “Yes, I reckon I do,” she said crisply; “it’s only a stranger here would think of being rude.  Good-night, Mr. Starbuck!”

She tripped away after this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her departure!  And for the first time she now thought that she had seen something in his face that she did not like!  But her lazy independence reasserted itself soon, and half an hour later, when she had left Aunt Chloe’s cabin, she had regained her self-esteem.  Yet, to avoid meeting him again, she took a longer route home, across the dried ditch and over the bluff, scarred by hydraulics, and so fell, presently, upon the old garden at the point where it adjoined the abandoned diggings.  She was quite sure she had escaped a meeting with Starbuck, and was gliding along under the shadow of the pear-trees, when she suddenly stopped.  An indescribable terror overcame her as she stared at a spot in the garden, perfectly illuminated by the moonlight not fifty yards from where she stood.  For she saw on its surface a human head—­a man’s head!—­seemingly on the level of the ground, staring in her direction.  A hysterical laugh sprang from her lips, and she caught at the branches above her or she would have fallen!  Yet in that moment the head had vanished!  The moonlight revealed the empty garden,—­the ground she had gazed at,—­but nothing more!

She had never been superstitious.  As a child she had heard the negroes talk of “the hants,”—­that is, “the haunts” or spirits,—­but had believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,—­the daughter of their master!  She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the illusions of Larry, and had shared her father’s contemptuous disbelief of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for help.  And with it came the sudden conviction that he had seen this awful vision, too.  This would account for his impatience of her presence and his rudeness.  She felt faint and giddy.  Yet after the first shock had passed, her old independence and pride came to her relief.  She would go to the spot and examine it.  If it were some trick or illusion, she would show her superiority and have the laugh on Starbuck.  She set her white teeth, clenched her little hands, and started out into the moonlight.  But alas! for women’s weakness.  The next moment she uttered a scream and almost fell into the arms of Mr. Starbuck, who had stepped out of the shadows beside her.

“So you see you have been frightened,” he said, with a strange, forced laugh; “but I warned you about going out alone!”