LAYING THE GHOST.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 12

LAYING THE GHOST.

FATHER SALLIES FORTH. FEAR TURNS TO LAUGHTER. ONLY A LONELY LINESMAN. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day.

A household in one of the main subur- j ban routes endured some hours of ner- j vous anxiety last night. A small boy of the family reported at about seven o'clock that a man loitering on the road had asked for a drink of water. His mother, keeping watch from a front window, saw dimly in the dark the figure of a man leaning against the neighbour's feiico and occasionally wandering aimlessly up and down the roadway, striking matches. The man was quetly whistling the latest popular tunes, and now and again conversing with passers by. Still more mysterious, whenever a tram passed, the loiterer strolled into the middle of the road, and then as calmly walked back again to lean over the fence or sit on the roadside. The mother's nerves by thiß time were so much on edge that she dared not turn on the lights. The father came home at eleven o'clock, and prepared for bed, but at last, infected with his wife's fears, he donned a dressing-gown over his pyjamas and roused the next door neighbour, a telephone subscriber. The number of the nearest police station was looked up, but, after all, perhaps there was not sufficient provocation, for the "limb of the law" to be called. They would look foolish if they brought a constable on a wild goose chase, so the father strode out to face the lurking danger and inquire the loiterer's business. He returned about a minute later, almost speechless with laughter. The tramway loop points had been under repair that day, and were still defective. The stranger was the linesman with the lonely all night duty of watching them.