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What was that noise?
Ralph Rexworth sat up in bed, and listened. Accustomed to wake at the slightest noise that might betoken danger, and to wake with all his senses about him, he had been disturbed by a strange, scraping sound, the cause of which he could not think of.
Only one dim point of light burnt in the dormitory, and all was still there save for the breathing of the sleepers. It was no sound of that sort which had awakened him.
There it was again—outside! He remembered having heard a sound like that once before—when the Indians had risen and come to attack the ranch. He had laid and listened to them as they crawled over the tops of the sheds, and the sound was like that! It was from outside! He rose, and creeping to the window, he lifted one corner of the blind, and peeped out.
Nothing there—stay, that was wrong! Surely that was a ladder propped against the wall? What was a ladder doing there, for there was none there the evening before! And the window there was open! Some one must have got in at that window!
Was it one of the boys who had been up to mischief, or, it seemed absurd, was some thief breaking in? Thieves did not, as a rule, break into schools!
He was half inclined to raise an alarm. But the thought came, that if this was some midnight escapade on the part of some of the boys, to do that might be to get them into disgrace—to make more enemies, and to interfere in what did not concern him.
That was a window just outside the Fifth-Form dormitory, too! Elgert might be in it, and he did not want to be the means of getting him into any more trouble.
But suppose that it was a thief? Ralph crept to the door and opened it noiselessly. He peered down the corridor, but nothing was to be seen or heard.