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don’t likemoonlight. It always reminds me of things I want to forget. Good-night. Don’t dream or see any ‘ha’nts.’”
    Curtis neither dreamed nor saw “ha’nts,” though he lay awake for a long time, thinking of the tragedy that had met him on the very threshold of his pastorate in Mowbray Narrows ... quiet Mowbray Narrows with its seemingly commonplace inhabitants.
    He was a little disappointed that he did not see or hear anything uncommon. But as the weeks passed he almost forgot that he was living in a supposedly “haunted” house. He was very busy getting acquainted with his people and organizing his church work ... which old Mr. Sheldon had undoubtedly allowed to lapse. In this he found Alice Harper’s assistance invaluable. He could never have reorganized the choir without her. She smoothed irritations and talked away jealousies. It was she who managed Deacon Kirk when he tried to put his foot down on the Boy Scout business; it was she who smoothed Curtis out of his consequent bitterness and annoyance.
    “And even Mr. Sheldon didn’t really approve of it,” he exclaimed bitterly.
    “Old people don’t usually take to new ideas,” she said mildly, “and you mustn’t mind Mr. Kirk. He was born a nincompoop, you know. Susan Baker would tell you that. And he is a good man and would be quite a nice one if he didn’t really think it was his Christian duty to be a little miserable and cantankerous all the time.”
    “I wish I could be as tolerant as you, Miss Harper. You make me feel ashamed of myself.”
    “I have learned tolerance in a hard school. I wasn’t always tolerant. But Deacon Kirk was funny ... I wish you could have heard him.”
    Her mimicry of the deacon sent Curtis into howls of laughter. Alice smiled over her success. Curtis had got into the habit of talking over all his problems with her. Some people said Mr. Sheldon didn’t like it. He made a sort of idol of her and worshipped her like a Madonna in a shrine.
    Yet she had her small foibles. She must know everything that went on in the house and church and community. It hurt her to be shut out of anything. Curtis thought that was probably one reason she did not seem to care much for Dr. Blythe or his wife, whom everybody else in Glen St. Mary and Mowbray Narrows seemed to love.
    Curtis told her all his comings and goings, finding her oddly jealous about his little secrets. She must even know what he had to eat when he went out to supper. And she was avid about the details of all his weddings.
    “All weddings are interesting,” she averred, “even the weddings of people I don’t know.”
    She liked to talk over his sermons with him while he was preparing them and was childishly pleased when now and then he preached from a text of her choosing.
    He was very happy. He loved his work and found his boarding house most agreeable. Long Alec was an intelligent, well-read fellow. Dr. Blythe dropped in occasionally, and they had long, interesting conversations. When Mrs. Richards died in the hospital it was taken for granted that Curtis should go on boarding at the Field place as long as he wanted to. Mowbray Narrows people seemed resigned to it, although they did not approve of his falling in love with Lucia.
    Everybody in the congregation knew that he was in love with Lucia long before he knew it himself. He only knew that Lucia’s silences were quite as enchanting as Long Alec’s eloquence or Alice’s trick of sly, humorous sayings. He onlyknew that other girls’ faces seemed futile and insipid compared with her brown beauty. He only knew that the sight of her stepping about the neat, dignified old rooms, coming down the dark shining staircase, cutting flowers in the garden, making salads and cakes in the pantry, affected him like a perfect chord of music and seemed to waken echoes in his soul that repeated the enchantment as he went to and fro among his people.
    Once he trembled on the verge of discovering his own secret ... when