"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I'd rather it was a nice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."
"Come on! we'll take in the hamper, and make tea on the deserted hearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his old auto."
"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hear the thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of the tonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. I see sheds back there, and I'll try to coax the old Juggernaut into that lane and so to the sheds."
He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girls approached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower front windows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrance from the side porch was ajar.
"'Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,'" quoted Helen, peering into the dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."
"There are plenty of windows out, so we'll have light enough," returned the girl of the Red Mill. "Don't be a 'fraid cat,' Helen."
"That's all right," grumbled her chum. "You're only making a bluff yourself."
Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might have made her shriek and run!
Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. The hall was dark, but the door into a room at the left—toward the back of the house—was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old, rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.
This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate, altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At the other, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a china closet, the doors of which had been removed. These ugly, shallow caverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On the hearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.