"Cassie!" cried Katy in wild alarm.
There was no answer. Striving to make her voice sound louder, but only succeeding in uttering a fainter whisper, Katy cried again.
"Cassie! Where are you?"
Still there was no answer.
Frantically Katy fumbled about for a match. The room was in order, a smooth towel covered the bureau, the bed was freshly made as though for a stranger. Katy stared stupidly about her until the match burned her fingers and she was left in the darkness which seemed to close in upon her and smother her. The great house with its tremendous length and breadth, its many rooms, their blackness, the dark closets in the eaves into which one could accidentally shut one's self and die—the great house took shape about her, dim, mysterious, terrible. Strange forms seemed to be here in the room crowding upon her. Though she was aware that it threatened her, and though she tried desperately not to yield it entrance to her consciousness, the horrible recollection of John Hartman's face as he sat in his buggy on the mountain road, of the still whiteness of the faces of her own dead, crept slowly upon her. Must she go through this house searching for her mistress? She dared not go for aid, when Cassie might be lying in some corner helpless or dying. Cassie could scarcely get out of her bed alone. Where had she gone? Who had made up this bed?
Then, in time to save her reason, Katy heard a faint voice addressing her from a distant corner of the great house.
"Katy!"
Katy moved slowly along the dark hall.
"Ach, where are you?"
"Here," answered the faint voice.