Marjorie hurried with her and rushed downstairs on Sunday morning, eager to hear the explanations of Anna’s aunt. The previous night the occurrence had appeared wild, but ; now, in the clear morning light, it seemed absurd. She felt sure that either she or the woman had been dreaming.  
Although most of the girls put in an early appearance in the dining-room, they were disappointed to find that Mrs. McCreedy was still in bed. They tried to their curiosity by discussing the affair from all possible angles.
 
“I really believe,” announced Lily, “that there is some superhuman power in that house that is responsible for this deed!”
 
“And I agree with you,” said Mrs. Munsen, firmly. “We have plenty of proof of spirits’ manifesting themselves in the Bible—so it is not a subject to be laughed at, or put aside as childish.”
 
“Lots of other people—older and wiser than we are—think the place is haunted!” put in Marie Louise.
 
“Well, I simply don’t believe it!” said Marjorie. “It’s much more likely that Anna has been kidnapped.”
 
“But why would anybody want to kidnap a poor servant girl?” asked Florence, practically. “There wouldn’t be any hope of .”
 
“Maybe it was a rejected suitor,” suggested Alice, always looking for the romantic.
 
“It really is a waste of time to make all these conjectures,” remarked Ethel, “before we have heard the facts in the case. The woman may have been dreaming, or Anna sleep-walking.”
 
“Let’s take the car and go down to the tea-house right away!” interrupted Lily. “Maybe we have had all our fears for nothing.”
 
“No, let’s wait till the aunt appears,” said Marjorie; “and then go.”
 
All this time Ethel had been scanning the newspaper for news, but she did not find even the slightest report from the police.
 
“You see the papers didn’t have sufficient facts to warrant a story,” she remarked. “So I should think—”
 
“Good morning, girls! Has Anna been heard from?” interrupted a woman’s voice from the stairs, and, looking up, they saw Mrs. McCreedy enter the room. She was a person, of build, not at all the type one would expect to find nervous or imaginative.
 
“Good morning, Mrs. McCreedy,” said Mrs. Munsen, pleasantly. “No news yet; but we are expecting to hear any minute. You met the girls last night. How do you feel this morning?”
 
“Much better,” replied the other. “In fact, I’d feel all right, if I wasn’t worried about Anna.”
 
“Let’s have breakfast,” suggested Mrs. Munsen; “and you can tell us the whole story.”
 
They all sat down at the table, and the girls turned expectant, questioning faces towards their visitor. They were more interested in hearing what she had to say than in eating their food.
 
“Well,” began Mrs. McCreedy, “you remember Mrs. Munsen and the young lady left the tea-house just about twelve o’clock—and the party broke up right away. Two or three of the fellows wanted to hang around and help put the things back in place, but Anna wouldn’t hear of it. She said her orders was twelve o’clock, and she meant to stick by them.
 
“After everybody was gone, we gathered up the food and put it away, and then went straight up stairs to the room where the army cots are, and spread out our blankets. We took off our good dresses, and put on our work dresses which we had brought with us, for we didn’t want to be bothered with night clothes.
 
“It was pretty hot, so we opened all the windows where there was screens, and we could hear the passing plain in the public road. They was getting fewer and fewer, and I was just dropping off to sleep, when Anna set up sudden in her bed, and reached over and touched me on the arm.
 
“‘Hear that, Aunt Mary?’ she whispered.
 
“‘What?’ says I.
 
“‘That moving around—in the stable!’
 
“‘Pshaw! Anna! That ain’t nothing!’ I says. ‘Go to sleep!’
 
“But she wouldn’t lie down.
 
“‘Aunt!’ she says again, ‘I wonder if I locked the back door.’
 
“‘Oh, I guess so!’ says I. I was that sleepy I didn’t care.
 
“But she was up now, putting on her pumps. And before I could say a word, she was creeping quiet like down the steps.”
 
“Oh!” Lily, who had not eaten a mouthful during this . “And you followed her?”
 
“No—not at first,” replied Mrs. McCreedy. “I heard her unbolt the back door—you see, she had locked it after all, just as I suspected. A minute later I heard her bolt it again, and first thing you know, I was off in a again.”
 
“But if she locked the door again, how did she get out of the house?” demanded Ethel. “Did somebody drag her through a window?”
 
“That’s just what I can’t tell you!” replied Mrs. McCreedy. “When I wakened up again—it must have been about half an hour later, judging from when I got here—and I missed her, I got up and searched the house. Both doors was locked and bolted on the inside, and all the screens was still hooked in the windows—from the inside. But Anna had disappeared!”
 
“It’s the ghost! I told you so!” whispered Marie Louise, her face as white as the table cloth.
 
“Maybe she fell down the cellar,” suggested Marjorie, to accept the supernatural theory.
 
“I thought of that,” said Mrs. McCreedy, “because the door was open—I think one of the boys went down cellar for a joke, during the party, and forgot to close the door. So I took a candle and went down—not that I enjoyed doing it much, but I didn’t want to leave Anna there unconscious if she fell down—but there wasn’t a sign of her!”
 
“And evidently the police didn’t find her, from the message they gave over the telephone,” said Florence.
 
“You left the door open when you came out?” asked Marjorie. “So that the police surely got in?”
 
“You bet I did!” replied the older woman. “The minute I was certain Anna was gone, I knew there was something queer about the house, and I opened the door and ran as fast as I could. It never entered my head to shut it!”
 
The girls were all trembling as they listened to the conclusion, and Daisy and ............