sound from the east wing, apparently, that made me stop, frozen,
with one bedroom slipper half off, and listen. It was a rattling
metallic sound, and it reverberated along the empty halls like
the crash of doom. It was for all the world as if something
heavy, perhaps a piece of steel, had rolled clattering and
jangling down the hard-wood stairs leading to the card-room.

In the silence that followed Liddy stirred and snored again. I
was exasperated: first she kept me awake by silly alarms, then
when she was needed she slept like Joe Jefferson, or Rip,--they
are always the same to me. I went in and aroused her, and I give
her credit for being wide awake the minute I spoke.

"Get up," I said, "if you don't want to be murdered in your bed."

"Where? How?" she yelled vociferously, and jumped up.

"There's somebody in the house," I said. "Get up. We'll have to
get to the telephone."

"Not out in the hall!" she gasped; "Oh, Miss Rachel, not out in
the hall!" trying to hold me back. But I am a large woman and
Liddy is small. We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a
brass andiron, which it was all she could do to lift, let alone
brain anybody with. I listened, and, hearing nothing, opened the
door a little and peered into the hall. It was a black void,
full of terrible suggestion, and my candle only emphasized the
gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me back again, and as the door
slammed, the mirror I had put on the transom came down and hit
her on the head. That completed our demoralization. It was some