her. The door was locked. She tried the
second and the third, and they stood locked too. And the three keys had
all been removed.

"To think of the master locking the doors!" said she to herself after
failing at each in turn. "As if I'd have tried to open them!"

That top storey was of the semi-attic kind, with roofs that sloped
and a sky-light in one of them and the slates close overhead. It was
a grey windy morning, and as she stood there, alone in that large
house save for the cook far away in the kitchen, with a loose slate
rattling in the gusts, and a glimpse of clouds driving over the
sky-light, she began all at once to feel uncomfortable. Those locked
doors were uncanny--something was not as it should be; there was a
sinister moan in the wind; the slate did not rattle quite like an
ordinary slate. Tales of her childhood, tales from the superstitious
western islands, rushed into her mind. And then, all at once, she
heard another sound. She heard it but for one instant, and then with
a pale face she fled downstairs and stood for a space in the hall
trembling and wondering.

She wondered first whether the sound had really come from behind the
locked doors, and whether it actually was some one stealthily moving.
She wondered next whether she could bring herself to confide in cook
and stand Janet's cheerful scorn. She ended by saying not a word, and
waiting to see what happened when the master came home.

He returned as usual in time for a cup of tea. It was pretty dark by
then and Mary was upstairs lighting the gas (but she did not venture up
to the top floor). She heard Mr. Rattar come into the hall, and then,
quite distinctly this time, she heard overhead a dull sound, a kind of
gentle thud. The next moment she heard the master running upstairs, and
when he was safely past she ran even more swiftly down and burst into
the kitchen.

"There's something in yon top rooms!" she panted.

"There's something in your top storey!" snapped cook; and poor Mary said
no more.

When she brought his tea in to Mr. Rattar, she seemed to read in his
first glance at her the same expression that had disturbed her in the
morning, and yet the next moment he was speaking in his ordinary grumpy,
laconic way.

"Have you noticed rats in the house?" he asked.

"Rats, sir!" she exclaimed. "Oh, no, sir, I don't think there are any
rats."

"I saw one just now," he said. "If we see it again we must get some rat
poison."

So it had