The bed was empty!
A four-poster that must once have boasted a canopied top, the huge old bed stood stark and sinister. A dark bedraggled cloth covered the mattress, but happily—and how glad they were—nothing else was there.
“Whew!” Terry ran a trembling hand across her forehead. “I feel as if I had just gone through a clothes wringer.”
“Such suspense! I lived a hundred years coming up those stairs,” declared Sim. “Is my face white?”
Arden did not feel like joking. She went closer to the bed.
“Absolutely empty! Those men must have very vivid imaginations,” she declared with a little laugh. “Seeing things, that way.”
“This time three men saw the same thing, or claim they did. The other time it was two who saw and who also claimed they heard the thudding of the soldier’s boots. Some complications even for ghosts,” Sim remarked.
“It’s very queer. The spirits of the departed owners of the Hall must be rising in protest against the invasion of the wreckers,” Terry suggested, not too merrily.
“Are you sure, my dear friends, you had nothing to do with this?” Dorothy asked, once more skeptical.
That question brought a storm of protest.