And now beneath the floor began a noise which made even Grandma
Padgett stand erect, glaring through her glasses.

"_Something's_ in the cellar!" whispered Bobaday.




CHAPTER V.

THE SUSAN HOUSE CELLAR.


It was not pleasant to stand in a strange house in an unknown
neighborhood, drenched, hungry and unprotected, hearing fearful
sounds like danger threatening under foot.

Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and
on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell
what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?

"I heard a noise," said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention,
as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.

"It's cats, I think," said Robert Day, husky with courage.

Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures
of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's
mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half
murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way