Mabel looked troubled, but had no answer just then, for the haunted house was before them. It was a dingy, ramshackle building, gray and deserted; broken slats flapped in the shutters, doors sagged on their hinges, and one dead limb of a scraggy tree scraped the moss-grown roof at every gust of wind.
The two girls, however, did not hesitate to approach by way of a grass-grown walk. “It does look the character,” observed Mabel as they paused on the sunken door-step, “yet it must have been rather a nice old place in its day. Shall we go in?”
“Why not? The hants won’t be waiting for us outside.”
“They won’t be inside either, unless I miss my guess.”
“That’s what we came ‘for to see.’”
The sagging front door did not yield to their efforts to open it. “Probably is nailed up,” suggested Mabel. “Let’s go around to the back.” This they did, and found an entrance through a low door, which led into a shed, which, in turn, opened into a large kitchen where a battered stove and some broken chairs stood. “It’s evident that no one has lived here for a long time,” remarked Mabel, looking around.
“No one but spiders,” returned Ellen, looking up at the cobwebs which draped the corners of the room. “Let’s go on, Mabel.”
They went from room to room, finding only a few bits of old furniture, and hearing only the tap-tap of the gaunt branch upon the roof, the creak of broken shutters, and the whir of wings in the chimney.
“Swallows,” exclaimed Ellen, “chimney-swifts they call them. Maybe they are the ghosts.”
Mabel opened a door which disclosed a flight of steps leading to the attic, but she closed it quickly. “Don’t go up,” she cried, as something came swooping toward her. “The house has bats in its belfry.”