ridors; but the girl could hear no sound ascribable to human agency.
Mrs. Clover no longer sang, her rocking-chair no longer creaked.

With infinite precautions she got up and slipped out of the room. Once
in the hallway she did hear a noise of which she easily guessed the
source; and the choiring of angels could have been no more sweet in her
hearing: Mrs. Clover was snoring.

Kneeling at the head of the staircase and bending over, with an arm
round the banister for support, she could see a portion of the kitchen.
And what she saw only confirmed the testimony of the snores. The woman
had moved indoors to read; an oil lamp stood by her shoulder, on the
table; her chair was well tilted, her head resting against its back; an
old magazine lay open on her lap; her chin had fallen; from her mouth
issued dissonant chords of contentment.

Eleanor drew back, rose and felt her way to the long corridor. Down this
she stole as silently as any ghost, wholly indifferent to the eerie
influences of the desolate place, spectrally illuminated as it was with
faded chequers of moonlight falling through dingy windows, alive as it
was with the groans and complaints of uneasy planks and timbers and the
_frou-frou_, like that of silken skirts, of rats and mice scuttling
between its flimsy walls. These counted for nothing to her; but all her
soul hung on the continuance of that noise of snoring in the kitchen;
and time and again she paused and listened, breathless, until sure it
was holding on without interruption.

Gaining at length the head of the stairs, she picked her way down very
gently, her heart thumping madly as the burden of her weight wrung from
each individual step its personal protest, loud enough (she felt) to
wake the dead in their graves; but not loud enough, it seemed, to
disturb the slumbers of the excellent, if untrustworthy, Mrs. Clover.

At length she had gained the newel-post and abstracted the key. The
foretaste of success was sweet. Pausing only long enough to unlatch the
front door, for escape in emergency, she darted through the hall, behind
the counter, into the little room.

And still Mrs. Clover slept aloud.

Kneeling, Eleanor fitted the key to the lock. Happily, it was well oiled
and in excellent working order. The tumblers gave to the insistence of
the wards with the softest of dull clicks. She grasped the handle, and
the heavy door swung wide without a murmur.

And then she paused, at a loss. It was dens