In a few minutes the trio had crossed the rickety wooden span. Before them lay a slippery moss- grown path.

            "The Haunted Walk," Nancy read aloud the name on a rustic sign.

            "Why not try another approach?" Bess said with a shiver. "This garden looks spooky enough without deliberately inviting a meeting with ghosts!"

            "Oh, come on!" Nancy laughed, taking her friend firmly by the arm. "It's only a name. Besides, the walk may lead to something interesting."

            Spreading lilac bushes canopied the trail. Their branches caught at Nancy's hair and clutched at her clothing. Impatiently she pushed them aside and held back the branches for her friends to pass beneath.

            "I wish we'd gone some other way," Bess complained. "This is no fun."

            "I think it is," Nancy replied. "It's mysterious here! It's so-"

            Her voice trailed away suddenly. George and Bess glanced at her quickly. Nancy was staring directly toward a giant evergreen.

            "What is it?" Bess demanded fearfully.

            "Nothing."

            "You didn't act as if it were nothing," George said to Nancy.

            "I thought I saw something, but I must have been mistaken."

            Despite their coaxing, Nancy would not reveal what had startled her. For an instant she thought a pair of penetrating, human eyes had been staring at the girls from behind the evergreen. Then they had blinked shut and vanished.

            "It must have been my imagination," Nancy told herself.

            She walked on hurriedly. As Bess and George sensed her thoughts, they drew closer to the young detective. Nancy rounded the evergreen and saw that it partially hid a vine-covered, decaying summerhouse.

            The building was empty, but her eye quickly caught a slight quivering of the vines beside the doorway, although there was no wind. She stopped short, struck by the realization that someone had been lurking there! Quietly she told the others.