When they entered the living-room with a dainty tray a few minutes later, they found Eileen standing by one of the windows facing the ocean, trying vainly to peer into the outer blackness. She started guiltily when she saw them and retreated to the fire, murmuring something about “the awful night.” But though she had seemed so eager for food, she ate almost nothing.
“Can’t you take a little of this hot soup?” urged Leslie. “It will do you so much good. You must be very hungry by now.”
“Oh, thanks, so much!” Eileen replied, with a grateful glance. “You are very good to me. I did really think I was hungry, at first, but I’m so nervous I just can’t eat!”
She pushed the tray aside and began to roam restlessly about the room. At every decent excuse, such as an extra heavy gust of wind or a flapping of the shutters, she would hurry to the window and try to peer out.
At length Phyllis made an excuse to disappear into Leslie’s room and was gone quite a time. Suddenly she put her head out of the door into the living-room and remarked, in a voice full of suppressed excitement: “Leslie, can you come here a moment?”
Leslie excused herself and ran to join Phyllis. “What is it?” she whispered breathlessly.
“Look out of the front window!” returned Phyllis, in a hushed undertone. “There’s something queer going on outside—by the old log!”
Leslie opened the window a crack. The howl of the storm and the lash of rain was appalling, and it was two or three minutes before she could accustom her sight to the outer blackness. But when she did manage to distinguish something, she was startled to observe not only one, but two dark figures circling slowly round and round the log, like two animals after the same prey, and watching each other cautiously.
“But that’s not all!” muttered Phyllis, behind her. “There’s a third figure standing in the shadow right by Curlew’s Nest. I saw him out of the side window. What on earth can it all mean?”
So absorbed were they that neither of them noticed the form that slipped into the room behind them and stood peering over their shoulders. But they were suddenly startled beyond words to hear Eileen, close behind them, catch her breath with an indrawn hiss, and mutter involuntarily: