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I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me."

"Did ever anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who had listened in dumb amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?"

"Not believe EXACTLY," faltered Anne. "At least, I don't believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's different. That is when ghosts walk."

"There are no such things as ghosts, Anne."

"Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly.

"I know people who have seen them.

And they are respectable people.

Charlie Sloane says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he'd been buried for a year.

You know Charlie Sloane's grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything.

She's a very religious woman.

And Mrs. Thomas's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin.

He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine days.

He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was really true.

And Ruby Gillis says-"

"Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again.

I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings.

You'll go right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you.

And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again."

Anne might plead and cry as she liked-and did, for her terror was very real.

Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall.

But Marilla was inexorable.

She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

"Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"

"I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now."

Anne marched.

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