The other girls were silently exploring, by means of their electric torches, the dark corners of the kitchen. They decided against taking bread or rolls as being too unromantic for a midnight feast. Jane convinced them that milk would do nicely to wash down the food, and it was when Arden opened the door of the immense refrigerator that she made the prize discovery of the evening.
“Look what I’ve found!” she exclaimed. “Two roasted chickens!”
“Lovely!” breathed Sim. “Come over here, kids! Arden has struck a gold mine!”
Temporarily leaving their own investigations, the other girls crowded around the ice box and focused their lights on the innocent browned birds.
“The sight of them makes my mouth water!” announced Sim. “But we must have enough food, now, with these as a background. Milk, pie and roast chickens! Lovely! Let’s take them and go quickly before we are caught.”
Arden reached in and lifted out one of the doomed chickens. She turned half around to hand it to Sim, who was waiting to take it, when the whole party of girls was suddenly frozen into immobility with terror.
For through the silence of the night sounded mournfully:
Dong! Ding-dong! Dong! Dong!
It was the old alarm bell again sonorously clanging at the mystic hour of twelve—the hour when “witches, warlocks an’ lang-nebbied things” are free to roam.
“Heavens! What’s that?” gasped Jane Randall, though well she and the others knew.