This was made the more difficult because of the long
stilts upon which the daring Jane McCarthy had walked. The long arms had
been sticks on which sheets had been draped. The arms had dropped when
Jane took her mighty fall and now lay on the ground on the other side of
the campfire.
"Are you hurt?" begged Harriet anxiously.
"Oh, my darlin'! I'm killed entirely."
"Wait till I take off your stilts. You will be all right as soon as you
get to your feet."
"Tommy has laid the ghost," cried a girl who had last run away. At this
the others came hesitatingly back. Mrs. Livingston half laughing, half
crying was assisting Jane to her feet. Jane's face wore a sheepish grin as
she shrugged her shoulders to make sure that they had not been dislocated.
Harriet had thrown off her mask. Her white robe was blackened from the
smoke and the fire from which she had rescued the singed banshee, and
Margery upon returning to the scene was complaining that she had bursted
half the buttons off her waist.
"There is your ghost, young ladies," smiled Mrs. Livingston. "Let it be a
lesson to you to never forget your self-possession, never to be carried
away by your impulses. Always use reason."
"Yeth. That ith what I did," declared Tommy.
"Why didn't you run?" asked Miss Partridge, who had remained near the
scene, but at what she considered a safe distance from the apparition.
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