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Show Ghosts For Two By JOHN PHILIP ORTH MIMIIMIIIIIIIIM Ml - PPU There was Miss Kitty Vernon, visiting visit-ing her married sister at Keith Hall, far out In the country, and there was Mr. Jack St. Clair, stopping at his brother's place, three miles from Keith Hall, for the fall hunting and shooting. Only three miles apart, and Miss Kitty galloping over the highways high-ways on her pony, and Jack roaming about on foot, and yet three long weeks had passed and the two had pot caught sight of each other. There is much talk about magnetic attraction, but the weather is sometimes some-times against it, or there is a range of bills to carry the current off at a tangent. Jack St. Clair was a poor shot and a worse fisherman. It is just such fellows fel-lows that go sloshing around and spoil the fun for others. When a snipe has been shot at 40 or 50 times without being even grazed he flies away to Canada for a resU- and the fish who has been permitted to eat all the bait off a hook time after time without being caught finally seeks other waters where there is something some-thing doing. When Jack came home from his all Jay excursions without so much as a bird's tall-feather or the scale of a fish his sister-in-law would say to bim: "Why not give It up?" "Why should I?" "Give it up and spend your time looking for a wife. You are twenty-five twenty-five years old, fairly wealthy, and It's time you settled down." "But I am looking. That's one good thing about the country you can look for snipe, fish and a wife at the same time. No lost hours. If you don't get ' snipe you may get fish. If you don't get fish you may meet .a damsel in distress and rescue her and marry her." Miss Kitty Vernon was not much or a horsewoman. When riding in the city park her horse was used to the paths and sights and cantered along half asleep and as steady as a clock. Her sister's country pony would shy at stumps, rabbits and geese, and when meeting with a farmer carrying iVoud otartd up orrtu tmdefj eggs to the village he would stand up on his hind legs and paw the air. Such conduct had Its embarrassing side. And then, when she had been to the village three times and galloped over the highways so often the scenery lost Its appeal, she would return from a ride looking anything but enthusiastic and her sister would say: "Why not give it up?" "And do what?" "Sit on the , porch." "And why that?" "A young man may come along in an auto any hour and bust a tire and have to ask for tools to repair it. Just such an event has brought about scores of marriages." "Humph! It will be something more romantic than a busted tire that will interest me! In riding around the country 1 may come across a young man caught In a barbed-wire fence one about to hang himself for unrequited unre-quited love one who has been driven to the top of a haystack by a savage bull and needs my help to get down. I shall continue to go about until something happens." Half-way between the village and Keith Hall, making It a mile and a half each way, was the old abandoned Parsons house. There were six acres of land around it grown up to bush and weed, and the house itself had gone to wreck. One thought of spooks when viewing It, even by daylight, day-light, and it was strange that it was not down on the list of haunted houses. Miss Kitty Vernon had passed It many a time, and Mr. Jack Sinclair had spent half an hour investigating the interior. Fate sometimes gets a lazy streak on, and then things move as slow as molasses creeping across the kitchen floor. Young man and maiden had somehow dodged each other for four whole weeks when Fate woke up. Then came a morning when the chickens chick-ens and ducks said it was going to rain. They beat the weather bureau at that sort of business. Mr. Sinclair decided not to go gunning and fishing fish-ing but to try his hand at a toy wheelbarrow wheel-barrow for his little niece, and Miss Vernon decided to sit on the porch with a rain-coat on and watch for the automobilisL Noon and no rain yet! The wheelbarrow wheel-barrow wouldn't wheel. The autoist the only one that came along was an old curmudgeon who was In a hurry to get somewhere, and he never looked at the girl on the porch and there was no explosion. Two o'clock and no rain! Mr. Jack yawned and swore, and Miss Kitty yawned anr1 didn't swear. Three o'clock four o'clock! Same overcast sky same clucking hens and quacking ducks, but the first drop of rain had yet to fall. "Hang it, but this Is the very best sort of snipe weather!" exclaimed Mr. Jack as he shouldered bis gun and set out. "I've got a letter to mail, and I'll canter to the village and back," said Miss Kitty as she ordered the man to saddle the pony. Fate was planning. A snipe or some other bird one is not over-particular about the species led Mr. Jack a two-mile chase. It did so by offering him about .fifty fair shots, and of course every one of them was a miss. He had Just aimed for his fifty-first miss when a drop of rain hit him on the nose and the long-deferred downfall began to get busy. The old Parsons house was the nearest near-est shelter, and he made for It. The pony was galloped Into the village vil-lage and -the letter mailed, and she headed for home. Half a mile from the Parsons house, and lust as it be gan to rain, the pony caught sight of a log beside the road he had passed a hundred times and shied at it Out of the saddle went Miss Kitty, and away for home galloped the pony. No bones broken and no skulls fractured, but no one can take a flop of the sort without a few bumps and being mussed muss-ed up more or less. The rain was making porridge of the dust when the unseated and very angry maid started for the old house. Mr. Sinclair bad reached the house fifteen minutes ahead of the girl, and had taken a seat on the rotting floor of what had been the parlor. Five minutes before her arrival he had heard a queer sound upstairs, but several sev-eral of the stair steps were gone and he could not have Investigated if he had wlshe3. He heard rather than saw Miss Kitty timorously enter the hall, and he could not make out what was going on. A growling from upstairs a pattering patter-ing across the floor a bumpety-bump! bumpety-bump! Ghosts for two! The real thing and no discount! Miss Kitty screamed out and fell down the front steps. Mr. Sinclair exclaimed, "The devil!" and also made for out of doors! He saw something some-thing flying towards the highway and he up with his gun and fired. He missed, of course, but there was a scream and the something fell down, and the huddle was under his feet before he made out that it was a girl in rain-wet and clinging garments. "Oh, Mr. Ghost!" from the bundle. "Who is it! What is it!" "Sir, how dare you!" "You hid there on purpose!" "And you came on purpose!" There was a moment's silence, and then both laughed heartily and even in the pouring rain explanations were entered into. "But there was surely a ghost upstairs," up-stairs," protested the girl. "And I will come here tomorrow and rout It out." Hand In hand, through rain and mud and darkness, Mr. Sinclair finally final-ly delivered his charge into her sister's sis-ter's care and then went his further way. "Now, then, Miss Kitty, you have had an adventure!" accused her sister. sis-ter. "I have." "And I demand to " "Ob, you needn't. I have been bucked off by the pony, rolled In the mud, rained on, visited a haunted house, heard a ghost and met the man 1 am to marry. That's all!" And next day, when Mr. Sinclair visited the Parsons house he found upstairs an old rat with her tall caught in a crack In the floor, and he blessed her and set her at llbritv |