We all stood aghast for a few minutes; but at last I summoned up courage enough to lean out, and whisper loudly—
“Achille! mon ami Achille!” when, as if in answer, came a most doleful “H-ooo, o-o-o, ho-o-o-o!” which made one’s very blood run cold.
“That’s only an owl,” said Clara, the next minute.
“A howl!” said Patty; “that it wasn’t, it was a groan, just the same as the pigs give when they’re dying in our slaughter-house at home.”
I leaned out of the window as far as I could, once more, and was trying to pierce the darkness below, when all at once I heard a window to the right opening very gently, and squeaking as it ran up, and that window, I felt sure, was the lady principal’s; so, recollecting the night of the alarm from Clara’s basin—agonised though I was—I felt obliged to close ours quietly, pick up the two hooks, and then we all three glided back to our room—my heart chiding me the while for forsaking poor Achille in such a time of dire distress. But what could I do? To stay or to raise an alarm was to be found out, and perhaps—ay, perhaps!—poor fellow, he was not hurt, after all.
It was just as well that we did slip back, for we had hardly closed the door before the alarm bell on the top of the house began to ring, and we heard the Fraülein spring out of bed with a regular bump upon the floor.
We were not many seconds scuffling into bed; and, just as we lay down, we heard the Fraülein’s door open, and then there were voices talking and a good deal of buzzing about, for quite half an hour. But we thought it better not to go out; for, when Clara took a peep, Miss Furness was hunting several of the girls back into their rooms with—
“Nothing the matter, young ladies. Back to your dormitories.”
So we lay quite still, and listened; while I essayed to allay my horrible fears about poor Achille, and tried to fancy that every sigh of the wind among the branches was him stealing—no, I won’t say stealing, it looks so bad—hurrying away. Then we heard the Fraülein come in, and her bed creak loudly as she lay down; and once more all was quiet, and I felt sure that they could not have seen or heard anything, but I dared not get up once more to see. Clara said she was sure she heard Mrs Blunt talking to the policeman out of the window again. Perhaps she did, but I did not; though it was most likely, after the ringing of the alarm bell.
“What are you sobbing for?” said Clara, all at once.