Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirtieth chapter of Rainbow Valley.

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Be continuing rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery chapter 30 The Ghost on the D*** somehow Faith and Carl and Una could not shake off the hold which the story of Henry Warren's ghost had taken upon their imaginations.

They had never believed in ghosts.

Ghost tales.

They had heard aplenty.

Mary Vance had told some far more blood curdling than this, but those tales were all of places and people and spooks far away and unknown.

After the first half awful, half pleasant thrill of awe and terror, they thought of them no more.

But the story came home to them.

The Old Bailey garden was almost at their very door, almost in their beloved Rainbow Valley.

They had passed and repassed it constantly.

They had hunted for flowers in it.

They had made shortcuts through it when they wished to go straight from the village to the valley.

But never again after the night when Mary Vance told them its gruesome tale.

They would not have gone through or near it on pain of death.

Death?

What was death compared to the unearthly possibility of falling into the clutches of Henry Warren's Groveling ghost?

One warm July evening, the three of them were sitting under the tree, lovers feeling a little lonely.

Nobody else had come near the valley that evening.

Jim Blythe was away in Charlottetown, riding on his entrance examinations.

Jerry and Walter Blythe were off for a sale on the harbor with old Captain Crawford.

NAN and Die and Rilla and Shirley had gone down the harbor road to visit Kenneth and Purses Ford, who had come with their parents for a flying visit to the little old house of dreams.

NAN had asked Faith to go with them, but Faith had declined.

She would never have admitted it, but she felt a little secret jealousy of Perseus Ford, concerning whose wonderful beauty and city glamour.

She had heard a great deal.

No, she wasn't going to go down there and play second fiddle to anybody.

She and Una took their storybooks to Rainbow Valley and read while Carl investigated bugs along the banks of the brook.

And all three were happy until they suddenly realized that it was twilight and that the Old Bailey Garden was uncomfortably nearby.

Carl came and sat down close to the girls.

They all wished they had gone home a little sooner, but nobody said anything.

Great velvety purple clouds heaped up in the west and spread over the valley.

There was no wind, and everything was suddenly strangely dreadfully.

Still, the marsh was full of thousands of fireflies.

Surely some fairy parliament was being convened that night.

Altogether, Rainbow Valley was not a canny place just then.

Faith looked fearfully up the valley to the Old Bailey garden.

Then, if anybody's blood ever did freeze, Faith Meredith certainly froze.

At that moment.

The eyes of Karl and Una followed her entranced gaze, and chills began gallopating up and down their spines also.

For there, under the big, Tamerick tree on the tumbled down grass grown dike of the bailey garden, was something white, shapelessly white.

In the gathering gloom, the three Merediths sat and gazed as if turned to stone.

It's it's the calf.

Whispered una.

At last.

It's too big for the calf, whispered Faith.

Her mouth and lips were so dry she could hardly articulate the words.

Suddenly Carl gasped.

It's coming here.

The girls gave one last agonized glance.

Yes, it was creeping down over the dike as no calf ever did or could.

Creep reason flood before sudden overmastering panic.

For the moment, every one of the trio was firmly convinced that what they saw was Henry Warren's ghost.

Carl sprang to his feet and bolted blindly with a simultaneous shriek.

The girls followed him like mad creatures.

They tore up the hill, across the road and into the mance.

They had left Aunt Martha sewing in the kitchen.

She was not there.

They rushed to the study.

It was dark and tenantless as.

With one impulse, they swung around and made for Ingleside, but not across Rainbow Valley, down the hill, and through the glen street.

They flew on the wings of their wild terror, carl, igna lead, Una bringing up the rear.

Nobody tried to stop them, though everybody who saw them wondered what fresh devilment those mance youngsters were up to now.

But at the gate of Ingleside, they ran into Rosemary West, who had just been in for a moment to return some borrowed books.

She saw their ghastly faces and staring eyes.

She realized that their poor little souls were wrong with some awful and real fear, whatever its cause.

She caught Carl with one arm and Faith with the other.

Una stumbled against her and held on desperately.

Children, dear, what has happened?

She said.

What has frightened you?

Henry Warren's ghost, answered Carl through his chattering teeth.

Henry Warren's ghost, said amazed Rosemary, who had never heard the story.

Yes.

Sobbed Faith hysterically.

It's there on the Bailey d***.

We saw it and it started to chase us.

Rosemary herded the three distracted creatures to the Ingle side.

Veranda, Gilbert and Anne were both away, having also gone to the house of dreams.

But Susan appeared in the doorway, gaunt and practical and unghost like.

What is all this rump is about?

She inquired again.

The children gasped out their awful tale while Rosemary held them close to her and soothed them with wordless comfort.

Likely it was an owl, said Susan unstirred.

An owl?

The Meredith's children never had any opinion of Susan's intelligence after that.

It was bigger than a million owls, said Carl, sobbing.

Oh, how ashamed Carl was of that sobbing in after days.

And it groveled, just as Mary said, and it was crawling down over the dike to get at us.

Do owls crawl?

Rosemary looked at Susan.

They must have seen something to frighten.

Them so, she said.

I will go and see, said Susan coolly.

Now children, calm yourselves.

Whatever you've seen, it was not a ghost.

As for poor Henry Warren, I feel sure he would be only too glad to rest quietly in his peaceful grave once he got there no fear of him venturing back.

And that you may tie to if you can make them see reason, Miss West, I will find out the truth of the matter.

Susan departed her Rainbow Valley valiantly grasping a pitchfork which she found leaning against the back fence where the doctor had been working in his little hayfield.

A pitchfork might not be of much use against Hans, but it was a comforting sort of weapon.

There was nothing to be seen in Rainbow Valley when Susan reached it.

No white visitants appeared to be lurking in the shadowy, tangled old Bailey garden.

Susan marched boldly through it and beyond it and wrapped with her pitchfork on the door of the little cottage on the other side, where Mrs.

Stimson lived with her two daughters back at Ingleside.

Rosemary had succeeded in calming the children.

They still sobbed a little from shock, but they were beginning to feel a lurking and salutatory suspicion that they had made dreadful geese of themselves.

The suspicion became a certainty when Susan finally returned.

I sound doubt what your ghost was.

She said with a grim smile, sitting down on a rocker and fanning herself.

Old Mrs.

Stimpson has had a pair of factory cotton sheets bleaching in the Bailey garden for a week.

She spread them on the dike under the tamarek tree because the grass was clean and short there.

This evening she went out to take them in.

She had her knitting in her hands, so she hung the sheets over her shoulders by way of carrying them.

And then she must have dropped one of her needles and find it.

She could not and has not yet, but she went down on her knees and crept about to hunt for it.

And she was at that when she heard awful yells down in the valley and saw the three children tearing up the hill past her.

She thought they had been bit by something and it gave her poor old heart such a turn that she could not move or speak.

Logist crouched there till they disappeared, then she staggered back home and they've been applying stimulants to her ever since.

And her heart is in a terrible condition and she says she will not.

Get over this fight.

All summer the Meredith sat crimson with a shame that even Rosemary's understanding sympathy could not remove.

I sneaked off home, met Jerry at the manscate and made remorseful confession.

A session of the Good Conduct Club was arranged for next morning.

Wasn't Miss West sweet to us tonight?

Whispered faith in bed.

Yes, admitted una.

It is such a pity it changes.

People so much to be made stepmothers.

I don't believe it does, said Faith loyally.

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Rainbow Valley.

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