Free Unknown by Unknown

went to America and did well for themselves. It’s queer, though, how these old yams survive, and I admit I wouldn’t put it past Nanny to enjoy making capital out of them! She used to scare me stiff when I was a youngster telling me that she had eyes in the back of her head. I believed it firmly and she certainly had a gift for knowing just what sort of devilment I was getting up to! But occult powers of any sort—” he shook his head. “That’s nonsense, of course. Simply people letting their imagination run away with them. You get the same thing when a house is left unoccupied for a long time and falls into disrepair. It gets the name for being haunted—as Nanny’s cottage might well have done if it had stayed empty much longer. In fact, I’m rather surprised that it hasn’t already. There’s all the material there for a first-rate ghost story!”
    “Yes, perhaps so,” Meg agreed doubtfully. “But even if anyone does have ideas like that, they’ll soon be forgotten when the cottage has been repaired and smartened up.”
    "Yes,” Uncle Andra replied sombrely. “When!”
    Meg looked at him sharply. She knew, of course, that the dilapidated condition of his inheritance had depressed him considerably, but now she read more than mere depression in both his face and his manner. Exhaustion was a more accurate description.
    With a pang she remembered how anxious both Aunt Ellen and she had been as the time had approached for Uncle Andra’s retirement. There had been a possibility of him being asked to postpone the date for a further year and it had been so very evident that increasing age and overwork had brought him very near to collapse. But neither of them had dared to advise him, for he was a man who preferred to make up his mind for himself and any suggestion of interference might have caused him to stay on out of sheer perversity.
    Then he had heard of Nanny’s legacy and to their intense relief there had been no more talk of continuing working. But now—the way things had turned out —Meg saw that all that strain and tension had returned. There was that same drawn, greyish look about his face, his movements were slow and deliberate as if each one had to be carefully considered before he made it and, worst of all, he had lost all the high spirits which the prospect of returning to Blytheburn had induced.
    “But you are going ahead with the work, aren’t you?” Meg asked, puzzled that there should be any doubt about it.
    “Of course I am!” Uncle Andra retorted testily. “But it will mean going further afield for someone to do the work than I’d anticipated, since no one in Blytheburn or Netherbyre will take it on.”
    “But why?” Meg asked anxiously. “Surely not because they really do think the cottage is haunted!”
    Uncle Andra hesitated.
    “No, not that. Unless you like to call it that when there’s deliberate obstruction because—someone—is using their influence to frighten people into submissiveness.”
    “Sir Hector?” Silently Meg’s lips shaped the name, and Uncle Andra nodded.
    “Sir Hector!” he replied grimly. “Who else? He knows perfectly well that he’s no legal right to the cottage and consequently he won’t come into the open. But I know, as surely as if he’d said it in words, that he wants to make it so nearly impossible for me to get the work done that I’ll be willing to sell to him at a knock-down price! Well—” his jaw set obstinately, “he can guess again! I’m staying, and I’m going to live in that cottage if it’s the last thing I do!”
    Meg’s heart missed a beat. Supposing it was the last thing he did—
    “Uncle Andra, would you like me to stay on?” she asked impulsively. “Because if you would, we could easily hire another caravan—”
    “No, certainly not,” Uncle Andra said so decidedly that Meg knew it was useless to argue. Then, seeing her distress, he patted her hand and spoke in his usual kindly way. “Now stop worrying, Meg.