"Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!" shouted the hollow, ghostly voices.
They seemed to be in the very room with us, reverberating in the very air we breathed, echoing from the four walls around, and from the ceiling above us!
"Jesu, Mary!" cried Cassy, dropping on her knees.
"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped Alice, clinging to me.
"This is very unaccountable," said our grandmother, looking all around the room, where nothing but bare walls and bare boards met the view.
We looked at each other in silence for a few moments, and then Mrs. Hawkins said:
"Come! let us look into the dining-room, and then call up Hector to assist us in searching the grounds."
We passed on into the next room and locked the door behind us, as we had locked every one in our tour through the house. That room was closely packed with furniture, over which we had to clamber our passage.
While we were doing so, once again sounded the detonating roll of the ball, the rattling, scattering of the pins, and the hollow peals of laughter, all echoing around and around us, as it were, in the same rooms.
Alice again seized her grandmother.