“Well, you won't go up alone, will you? And Bony won't go up alone, will he? Somebody's got to go up and see if there's anything up there we can pry our way out with. Come on! That noise ain't nothin' but the wind, or maybe an owl, or something else.” So I had to go. I made Swatty go first, and he went up the attic stairs real slow, and I didn't crowd him any, you bet! At the top of the stairs he stopped short. So I stopped short.
“What's the matter?” I whispered. Swatty stood still.
“There's something up here or somebody—something alive,” he whispered back in terror.
And there was! Between the moans I could hear it breathe, a long breath, like “Ah-ah!” So the next thing I knew I was down two flights of stairs at the front door, trying to scratch my way through the porch roof with my finger nails, and Bony was hanging onto my legs, and we were both scared stiff. I guess it wasn't so long after we heard something breathe in the attic, about a second after, maybe. And I couldn't scratch my way out. So I began to yell: “Swatty! Oh, Swatty! Come here; why don't you come here? Oh, Swatty, come!” And Bony yelled too. We both did. I guess we both cried, we were so scared and frightened and afraid. Shut in a haunted house like that and something moaning and breathing in the attic! Anybody would be scared. Anybody but Swatty.
Afterward, the next time we got together after Bony's ankle was well and after the manager of the Poor Farm had given us each a watch and chain for what we did, Swatty said he wasn't scared when he heard the groaner breathe, because he had heard his folks's cow when it had the colic, and that was the way the cow groaned and breathed when it had it. Anyway, when I ran away from him and left him alone he stood and listened, and then he went up the last step and listened again. It was black up there. So he said, “Who's there?” and waited and the groaning kept on. So he walked right over toward where the groaning kept coming from. He walked slowly, pushing one foot ahead of him and holding out both hands, because the floor might not be all there, and all at once his foot hit something hard and cold. He was barefoot, like all of us.
It might have been a snake. It might have been anything, for all Swatty knew, but he bent down and felt it with his hand. I wouldn't have done it for a million dollars, and Bony wouldn't have done it for ten million dollars! No, sir! So at first Swatty thought it was an old scythe blade somebody had left there, and he was mighty glad anyway, because it would do to pry the boards off a window and let us out, but when he tried to pick it up it was held onto.
Well, I guess I might as well say it right out. It was a sword, and it was Mrs. Groogs's sword, and it was old Mrs. Groogs that was holding onto the other end of the sword and lying there and groaning and breathing! It was her son's sword, and he had been killed in the war Grant and Lincoln and Swatty's father had been in, and when she ran away from the Poor Farm and they couldn't find out where she had gone, that was all she took and that was where she went to die—there in the attic of the Haunted House. She went there because she was kind of crazy and thought the mother of a son that had died for his country oughtn't to die in the Poor House. But she didn't die in it, either, because the Woman's Relief Corps rented a room for her and the city gave her Outside Support again.
So if it hadn't been for us Mrs. Groogs would have starved to death in the Haunted House, and if it hadn't been for her and her sword maybe we would have starved to death in it. So I guess it was all right.
So that time none of us got licked when we got home. Swatty didn't because his father was a G.A.R. and Mrs. Groogs was a G.A.R.-ess, and I didn't because my folks were glad I hadn't been struck by lightning, and Bony didn't because his folks were moral suasion. They jawed him.