Was that a rustling sound? Were those distant steps she heard–somewhere in the house? Did she hear a door creak?
She slipped out of bed, drew on her woollen wrapper and thrust her feet into slippers. She saw that it was bright moonlight outside, for a pencil of light came through a chink in one of the shutters.
Lyddy slept as calmly as a baby–and ’Phemie was glad. Of course, it was all foolishness about ghosts; but she believed there was somebody prowling about the house.
She lit the candle and after the flame had sputtered a bit and began to burn clear she carried it into the kitchen. Their little round alarm clock ticked modestly on the dresser. It was not yet ten o’clock.
“Not the ‘witching hour of midnight, when graveyards yawn’–and other people do, too,” thought ’Phemie, giggling nervously. “Surely ghosts cannot be walking yet.”
Indeed, she was quite assured that what she had heard–both the voice and the footsteps–were very much of the earth, earthy. There was nothing supernatural in the mysterious sounds.
And it seemed to ’Phemie as though the steps had retreated toward the east ell–the other wing of the rambling old farmhouse.
What was it Lucas Pritchett had said about his father using the cellar under the east wing at Hillcrest? Yet, what would bring Cyrus Pritchett–or anybody else–up here to the vinegar cellar at ten o’clock at night?
’Phemie grew braver by the minute. She determined to run this mystery down, and she was quite sure that it would prove to be a very human and commonplace mystery after all. She opened the door between the kitchen and the dark side hall by which they had first entered the old house that afternoon. Although she had never been this way, ’Phemie knew that out of this square hall opened a long passage leading through the main house to the east wing.
And she easily found the door giving entrance to this corridor. But she hesitated when she stood on the threshold, and almost gave up the venture altogether.