The girls were a little nervous as the chief disappeared inside. But still there was no sound. The silence was almost terrifying. The chief came out in a few minutes to say:
“I can’t seem to find anybody.”
“I think you had better look again and go in every room,” said Arden. Her voice was firm. “There must be someone.”
“All right, I’ll take another look,” assented the chief. “No trouble to show goods and some pitchers go to the well too often.”
Again he disappeared inside the place.
Again portentous silence held them all in its grip.
CHAPTER XXIX
The Barking of Tania
Chief Reilly came out of the poor little house, a veritable shack it was, shaking his head.
“I suppose,” remarked Sim in an aside to Arden, “he is going to say ‘it’s a long road without a cat in the attic,’ or something equally brilliant.”
“He might,” remarked Terry, “propose that the race is not always to the swift but there are none so blind as those who won’t eat.”