It had been to let for quite a long time, but ever since the first tenants who rented the house two years after the death of its original owner, had left, no one had made even the smallest offer for it.

"Your uncle had a good deal of trouble over the house," had said Mr. Milbank, the solicitor. "When she lived in it his sister never made any complaint, but she was an eccentric old lady, and it's conceivable she wouldn't have cared. But the fact of the matter is, Mrs. Malcolm, the house has got rather a bad name. The people your uncle let it to took it for three years - and they left at the end of one. They said the place was haunted."

"Oo!" said Margaret. "What a thrill for us!"

The lawyer smiled. "I shouldn't build on it, Miss Fortescue. I think you'll find that it's nothing more thrilling than rats. But I thought I'd warn you. So that if you feel you'd rather not take possession of a reputedly haunted house you might like me to follow up this offer." He lifted up a sheet of note-paper that lay on his desk, and looked inquiringly at Peter.

"Is that the offer you wrote to us about?" Peter asked. "Some fellow who saw the board up when he was motoring in that part of the world, and wanted to know particulars?"

Mr. Milbank nodded. Celia and Margaret turned anxiously to their brother, and began to urge the desirability of owning a country house so near to town, and yet so ideal in situation and character.

The trout stream won Peter over. Charles, a young barrister with a growing prctice , had no time to waste, so he siad,in going to look at a house which his wife was apparently set on inhabiting whether he liked it or not.