CHAPTER XVII--THE MYSTERY

And where was Laura herself all this time?

She had returned to consciousness almost at once. Indeed, the pulling of the bonds upon her wrists and the veil tied so tightly across the lower part of her face would naturally have aroused her.

But for a moment she could neither rise nor move. It seemed as though she was paralyzed. Her ankle began to pain, then, and at the first throb the girl came fully to her senses.

"Oh! where am I?" she thought.

But she couldn't have spoken the words aloud. The muffler was too tight across her lips.

The ghostly figure that had flitted out of the room had scarcely gone when Laura opened her eyes. The frightened girl looked all around for it. She remembered how awful it had looked. But nothing was in sight--nothing but the wavering reflection of the ghost-light on the wall.

To her ears, however, came the screaming of the frightened girls on the plateau before the house. It was not alone her three comrades screaming; but the chorus of the whole party of M. O. R.'s who had given voice to their terror. And the sounds were swiftly receding. The girls were leaving her alone, bound and helpless, in this awful house!

Never for a moment did Laura Belding believe that the thing was a trick, or joke. It could not be part of the M. O. R. initiation. Mary O'Rourke and Celia Prime and the other seniors governing the secret society were not the girls to make up any such plan as this with which to frighten new members of the order. Nor would the school authorities allow such action by the M. O. R.'s.

Nevertheless, Laura knew that something strange had happened to her. There had been no person in this big room when she and her three friends had entered to drive the nails. Yet, when the fright occurred and she had attempted to run, she was hauled back by the skirt.

Something seemed to have grabbed her. Was it a hand--the same hand that had lashed her wrists and gagged her with this veil?

Yet, any person beside the four girls would have betrayed his presence--for the room had never been wholly dark--only in the far corners. And no arm would be long enough to reach out of those shadows and seize the bottom of Laura's skirt and pull her to the floor again when she started to run.

The girl was still frightened--desperately frightened, indeed. But the possibility of anything supernatural having happened to her had long since departed from her mind. Even the flickering reflection of the ghost-light did not trouble her.

No ghost could have bound her hands and gagged her.

The voices of the girls had died away into the distance ere this. With a groan of pain because of her ankle, Laura rolled over and tried again to rise. Something jerked her back!

She threw herself over and rolled away from the point of contact. There was a tearing sound--and she was free!

She scrambled to her feet. Then she saw what manner of "ghostly hand" had held her. In stooping to drive the first nail into the floor, she had driven it through the hem of her skirt--that was what had jerked her to the floor when she tried to run with her comrades.

"Well! I am silly!" mumbled the girl.

Instantly she heard somebody cry out, but outside of the house.

"What's the matter mit you, Otto?" growled a deeper voice.

"I heard a voice, fader! Not nearer to dat house would I go--so hellup me! It iss de ha'nt!"

Laura's muffled voice was audible a few yards away, but she could not tell them who she was, and how situated. She ran to the window. One sash was gone. Boys had used the windows as targets in times past.

"Ouch!" yelled the younger voice, in a long-drawn wail. "Dere iss oldt Sarah!"

"Be still! you are a fool!" commanded the gruffer voice.

Laura saw that a man and a boy were outside the fence. The man carried a lantern. It had been this light coming along the road that had so terrified the M. O. R.'s and the candidates for initiation.

The farmer raised his lantern so that the light fell full upon the face of the girl in the house. He saw the veil-bandage, and her tied wrists. In a moment he hopped over the broken-down fence and hurried to the casement.

"Come here, Otto!" he commanded. "See your ghost--fool! It is a harmless girl--and she is in trouble. What does this mean, eh?" he asked, in his queer English. "Somebody been fooling you, no?"

Then seeing that Laura could not answer him save by a murmur from behind the muffler, the farmer said:

"Run in there undt untie her, Otto! Do you hear?"

"But the ghost, fader!" gasped the fat boy, who had followed his parent to the house, and seemed much the more cowardly of the two.

"Bah! Ghost indeed! There iss no ghost here----"

"But we know de house iss haunted. Are you sure dat iss not old Sarah?" demanded Otto, in much fear.

"It is a girl--a _madchen_--I tell you! A mere child--yes!" cried the father. "Go in there and unloose her hands--dolt!" and he boxed his son's ear soundly.

"Oh! I can come out myself!" Laura tried to say.

She darted away from the window, found the open door, and so staggered out of the house to meet the farmer and his half-grown boy, with the lantern, on the porch of the haunted dwelling.

"Ah-ha!" exclaimed the man. "We heardt de oder girls screeching--yah? Undt dey tie you undt leave you here?"

He was fumbling with the knotted veil as he spoke, having passed the lantern to Otto, and now unfastened it so that Laura could reply.

"No, no!" she said. "Something frightened us all. First your lantern coming along the road. We thought it was the ghost light."

"Ouch!" wailed Otto again. He was very much afraid of the ghost.

"And then--I nailed my skirt to the floor and could not get away quickly. I--I am afraid I have been a dreadful fool," admitted Laura, with some chagrin.

"But you did not tie yourself--so," growled the farmer, working on her wrist bonds.

"No. I fell and something--_somebody_, I should say--came and tied my wrists and put that veil over my face--give me the veil, please."

"Some of your companions play a choke onto you--eh?" said the farmer.

"No. They would not be so cruel. And they were all as badly frightened by your lantern as I was."

"Den you haf an enemy--eh?" queried the man.

"I do not know who. I don't know what it means. Oh!"

"You are hurt, Miss?"

"I can scarcely hobble on my foot. I turned my ankle," explained Laura.

"Then Otto and I will help you home--to our house yet," said the farmer. "We were hunting a stray cow. My name iss Sitz. I lif' back up de road--yonder. Two of your girls friendts bought milk at my house to-night."

"Yes. I know who you are," admitted Laura. "Do you suppose you could get me to your house and then send word to the city so that my father or brother will get it--without frightening mother?"

"Ach!" ejaculated the farmer. "We can carry you--Otto undt me; if he _iss_ a fool-boy, he iss strong. Undt we haf de telephone. Sure we can carry you."

They made a "chair" with their four hands, in which Laura sat, leaning back against their arms, and so maintaining her balance. She carried the lantern to light the way, and very soon after her girl friends had left the plateau in their stampede, she was being carried across the brook and up the country road to the Sitz farmhouse.

Laura had recovered from her fright ere this; but the mystery of what had happened to her continued to puzzle and amaze her.

Who had done this to her? What had been the object of the attack? And why should anybody desire to so maltreat and frighten her? These questions were repeated over and over in her mind, even while she was talking with Mr. Sitz and Otto. And there seemed to be no sane and sensible answer to them!

It surely was not any of the M. O. R.'s who had done this. They had all been just as frightened as they could be by the light of Mr. Sitz's lantern. Of course, Mary's foolish story of the ghost had started the girls off on the stampede when Jess and Nellie and Dora had run from the haunted house.

Laura remembered very vividly what she had seen in the room after her friends had left her. The figure in white had tied her hands and adjusted that veil across her mouth.

Surely, she must have some enemy--some person who really hated her. For nobody else, it seemed to Laura Belding, could have done so cruel a thing. She had no idea who this enemy could be, however.

Nevertheless, she had stuffed the veil into the front of her blouse and intended to hold on to it. That veil might prove to be a clue to the identity of the person who had bound and gagged her.