Rhoda stopped for a moment and heard the tramp of the men as they came up the stairs from the cellar. Then she laughed merrily.
“Why, Marcia, you’re singing all out of tune! I never heard you do that before. Come, now, let’s all sing the chorus together!”
Mary Ellen’s voice rose, rich and melodious, above the other two as the music made its mournful plaint through the simple lines:
“Oh, my poor Nellie Gray,
They have taken her away,
And I’ll never see my darling any more!”
The men were going through the rooms upstairs and one of them said to another, as he stopped to listen, “That girl can sing, can’t she?”
Rhoda heard them coming downstairs and knew that Marcia was looking at her with eyes wide and face a little pale. Would they come in? Suddenly she was aware that her nerves were steady and strong as steel and that her heart was beating as calmly as ever. “Now for the next verse, Marcia!” and her fingers moved across the keys. Then she heard the men at the door.
“There’s some one in the hall. I must see what they want,” she said, rising and casting an encouraging smile at Miss Kimball. Marcia gazed at her wonderingly as she moved calmly across the room and then, feeling the contagion of her courage, turned quickly to Mary Ellen, and to draw her attention away from the door so that she would not face it, began asking her what other songs she knew.
“Excuse me, Miss Ware, for disturbing you and your friends,” Marshal Hanscomb was saying, “but my duties under the law make it necessary for me to search your house.”