The Secret of Mirror Bay by Carolyn G. Keene

home?”
    “I think that’s Yo,” Nancy explained. “His full name is Johann Bradley but everyone calls him Yo.” She turned toward the water and shouted down, “Is that you, Yo?”
    “Yes.”
    “Come on up.”
    When the pudgy young man arrived, he was introduced to the newcomers and shook hands with each of them. Then he said, “Nancy, I have a clue for you.”
    “Wonderful. What is it?”
    Yo said he had seen the girl who resembled her getting on a bus in Cooperstown. It was going to New York City.
    “That is news,” Nancy agreed.
    Yo grinned. “I guess she’s gone for good. Bet you’re glad of that.”
    “If it’s true, of course, I’m glad,” she answered. “But she might come back.”
    Nancy was wondering if the mysterious girl were mixed up in another vacation hoax. She asked Yo if he knew anything about a speedboat named the Water Witch.
    “I’ve seen it at a Cooperstown dock,” he said. “I believe it’s a private one.”
    When he was told that the girl who resembled Nancy had been piloting the boat and almost hit Bess, Yo offered to find out who owned it.
    He abruptly changed the subject and said to Matt Bronson, “Have you ever been up in this neck of the woods before?”
    “No, I haven’t. I understand it’s very interesting historically.”
    Yo declared it was more than that. “It’s ghost country!”
    “Really?” Matt said, a twinkle in his eye.
    Yo was serious. “You don’t believe me? Well, I’ll tell you a story that’s absolutely true.”
    The others listened intently as Yo began his ghostly tale. “Not far from here on a certain night a long time ago a man and his wife were riding in a one-horse carriage. It was a lonely road and they were pretty far from town. Both of them became very weary. Presently they saw a light in a house a short distance ahead and the man said, ‘Perhaps these people will let us have lodging for the night.’
    “They rode up to the front door, which was opened by a nice elderly couple. The travelers explained their situation and asked if they might stay overnight. The farmer said, ‘Yes, indeed.’ He directed the man to unhitch his horse and put him in an empty stall of the barn. He did this, then the travelers went into the house.
    “They were shown to a plain but comfortable bedroom upstairs and soon were sound asleep. They woke up early the next morning and decided not to bother their host and hostess but to slip away. They hitched up their horse and drove into town. People there asked where they had spent the night.
    “When the travelers told them, everyone stared in amazement and fear. ‘What was so strange about that?’ the man asked.
    “The reply was that the house had burned down many years before.
    “‘But we did sleep there,’ the couple insisted and could not be talked out of it. Finally one of the men in town said he would drive back with the couple and prove it to them. They went all the way to the farm and sure enough the house had burned to the ground.”
    As Yo stopped speaking, Ned remarked, “And there’s something else to the story. Before the travelers left the farm that next morning, the man put a fifty-cent piece on a marble-top table in the hall. When the couple returned, they could hardly believe their eyes. On the marble top, which was the only part left of the table, lay the fifty-cent piece!”
    Yo’s eyes opened wide. “How’d you know that?” he asked.
    For answer Ned merely grinned. Yo asked no more questions. Announcing he must leave, he stood up and said good-by to everyone. A few minutes later he was roaring off in his outboard motorboat.
    Nancy said to Ned, “You’d heard that ghost story before.”
    “Yes, but you’d never guess where. In connection with my psych course at Emerson this past year. We took up the study of ghosts. Scholars of this subject declare that all these stories are merely folklore.”
    Night had come on by this time and the fireflies seemed to be everywhere. Aunt