Walter's ghost haunted Rainbow Valley and no one in Glen St. Mary could grudge him. He was a gentle wraith, as poetically abstracted in death as he had been in life, and if there was a melancholy fading piping faintly audible whenever his silvery form was glimpsed between the trees, no one minded that either. He wasn't mischievous as he had sometimes been as a boy; he'd been known to guide a lost child back towards the pale red shore road, obscurely comforted, tears wiped away. No one spoke of it to his mother but she knew. Anne always knew.