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"They are here on the table," I replied, wondering as much at the hectic flush which now enlivened her features as at the extreme paleness that had marked them the moment before. "Search them! There is something new in them about me. There must be. Read Mr. Packard's message." I took it from her hand; only eight words in all.
When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he paraded around the deck without even a revolver on him. He was tomahawked. His head remains in Malaita. It was suicide. So was Packard's finish suicide." "I grant that precaution is necessary in dealing with them," Joan agreed; "but I believe that more satisfactory results can be obtained by treating them with discreet kindness and gentleness."
It looked that way. But before yielding to the discouragement following this thought, I glanced about me again and suddenly remembered, first the creaking board, which had once answered to the so-called spirit's flight, and secondly the fact which common sense should have suggested before, that if my theory were true and the secret presence, whose coming and going I had been considering, had fled by some secret passage leading to the neighboring house, then by all laws of convenience and natural propriety that passage should open from the side facing the Quinlan domicile, and not from that holding Mayor Packard's study and the remote drawing-room.
Steele was devoting himself to the discovery of Mayor and Mrs. Packard's political enemy, I would essay the more difficult task of penetrating the mystery threatening their domestic peace. I could but fail; a few inquiries would assure me of the folly or the wisdom of my course.
Incidents, these and others of their kind, to fill Steve Packard with rage; but Blenham's supreme blows Blenham's and old man Packard's were reserved for late in the dry season when they fell hardest.
Packard kindly invited me to meet, but I begged to be allowed to enjoy the library. I had too much to consider just now, to find any pleasure in society. Three questions filled my mind. What was Mrs. Packard's secret trouble? Why were people afraid to remain in this house? Why did the old woman next door show such interest in the new member of her neighbor's household?
And as he looked, he forgot the stars in an intense desire to know the intimate details of her life the mechanical, monotonous habits that fill the day from morning till night, and yet are too trivial to tell. He asked some questions about Packard's factory where she worked, and Pinkey's tongue ran on wheels when she found a sympathetic listener.
The Enfield boys have come over, and, as all the Hampshire county folks know, they are tough fellers to beat. Gorham Polly keeps tally, because he has got the newest jackknife oh, how slick it whittles the old broom handle Gorham picked up in Packard's store an' brought along jest to keep tally on! It is a great game of ball; the bats are broad and light, and the ball is small and soft.
It did seem very puerile to me, save as it might possibly account in some remote way for Mrs. Packard's peculiar mental condition. Up-stairs I found Ellen. She was in a talkative mood, and this time I humored her till she had told me all she knew about the house and its ghostly traditions. This all had come from a servant, a nurse who had lived in the house before.
Packard's person and the extreme charm of manner which never deserted her, no matter how she felt. Now I found myself compelled to admire the force and quality of her mind, her readiness to meet emergencies and the tact with which she had availed herself of the superstition latent in the Irish temperament.
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