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loved--and doing most of them rather badly.
    Ellie grinned as she looked at the piece of embroidery on the top of the pile. Kate still hadn't really mastered the satin stitch--that deceptively simple and most difficult of all embroidery stitches. She was still trying, though. The overall effect wasn't bad.
    Kate could do most things competently; it was probably because she tried to do so much that she had occasional, and often spectacular, failures. Grant had been fairly kind about Kate's failure with electrical work. She had been accused of blacking out the entire town on one occasion, although she strenuously denied this, pointing out, with some justice, that even if she had tried to she could not have produced such massive effects. And there had been a storm that night ... Old Man Fletcher, the chief prodevil-MAY-CARE 31
    ponent of the witchcraft theory, insisted that Kate had called up the storm to get back at him for hunting on her property. Lightning had struck his still and reduced it to a rubble of fused copper coils.
    The day passed with exquisite slowness. Ellie embroidered, played the guitar, got herself some lunch, demudded four dogs, fed twelve cats, and again denied responsibility for the rain. The cats reacted variously; some kindly overlooked her inadequacy and wanted to sit on her lap, some sat and sulked ostentatiously at her, some left for parts unknown. Ellie did a crossword puzzle and practiced throwing darts, and read, and played the piano. She got herself some supper, demudded six dogs, and counted cats--and repeated, rather shrilly, that she could not make it stop raining.
    The phone had rung several times; enjoying her solitude, she had not answered it. Kate had a recording device attached to the phone, although she usually wiped the messages without listening to them.
    After supper Ellie watched television for a while, finished the crossword puzzle, and then decided to go to bed. The sound of the rain made her sleepy.
    She checked the doors downstairs before she went up, although she was not at all nervous. The dogs were a security factor, though not in the way Kate claimed; they were all idiotically friendly, and most of them were arrant cowards. Ellie assumed that they would make enough noise welcoming a burglar to awaken her, and that if she were in any danger of sleeping through the welcome, she would certainly wake up when William, the Saint Bernard, tried to climb into bed with her. The last time she had visited Kate, William had encountered a large clicking beetle in the hall, and had fled to Ellie's bed, trembling with terror.
    Normally the dogs didn't sleep upstairs, so Ellie was accompanied by only half a dozen cats when she started up. She was accustomed to weaving around
    32 Elizabeth Peters them, even when they suddenly lay down on the step under her poised foot, but the climb did require a little concentration; she was gazing at the floor and thinking of nothing in particular except falling--
    certainly not of Kate's final words--when a slight change in the light above made her look up.
    She was almost at the top of the stairs. To left and right the long upper hail of the west wing stretched out. She had a clear unobstructed view of a considerable section of bare wall. Only it wasn't bare. Not exactly.
    The man was young, and not really handsome; but he was a pleasant-looking person, with an attractive smile. His hair fell in long, wavy locks to his shoulders.
    He wore a brown coat with lace at his throat, knee breeches, and white stockings; and, at knee level, a low table with a vase of flowers on it. The table was the one that normally stood in that part of the hall. The man was, in a word, transparent.
    As Ellie stood transfixed he went out--disappeared, vanished--like a light when a lamp is switched off.
    CHAPTER THREE.
    Ellie was aroused from her stupor by a feline wail.
    She was standing on someone's tail. She lifted her foot, but remained where she was, uncertain whether to