Except for the one window and the door by which she had entered,
the four walls, covered with old-fashioned ugly paper, had no openings
of any kind. There could be no attic or empty space above the ceiling
because she could hear the rain upon the sloping roof. She looked under
the bed and found nothing but dust. She looked in the bed, even under
the rocking-chair.
"Well, there!" she muttered. "I said it and I was right. I AM gettin'
to be a nervous old fool. I'm glad Emily ain't here to see me. And yet I
did--I swear I did hear somethin'."
The pictures on the wall by the window caught her eye. She walked over
and looked at them. The lantern gave so little light that she could
scarcely see anything, but she managed to make out that one was a dingy
chromo with a Scriptural subject. The other was a battered "crayon
enlargement," a portrait of a man, a middle-aged man with a chin beard.
There was something familiar about the face in the portrait. Something--
Thankful gasped. "Uncle Abner!" she cried. "Why--why--"
Then the lantern flame gave a last feeble sputter and went out. She
heard the groan again. And in that room, the room she had examined so
carefully, so close as to seem almost at her very ear, a faint voice
wailed agonizingly, "Oh, Lord!"
Thankful went away. She left the comforter and the lantern upon the
floor and she did not stop to close the door of the little bedroom.
Through the black darkness of the long hall she rushed and down the
creaky stairs.
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