They entered the house. The lamp light was flashed into the east room. It was empty!
Not quite empty, after all. On the floor was a three-cornered bit of cloth—a piece of Laura’s skirt—nailed to the boards.
CHAPTER XVII—THE MYSTERY
And where was Laura herself all this time?
She had returned to consciousness almost at once. Indeed, the pulling of the bonds upon her wrists and the veil tied so tightly across the lower part of her face would naturally have aroused her.
But for a moment she could neither rise nor move. It seemed as though she was paralyzed. Her ankle began to pain, then, and at the first throb the girl came fully to her senses.
“Oh! where am I?” she thought.
But she couldn’t have spoken the words aloud. The muffler was too tight across her lips.
The ghostly figure that had flitted out of the room had scarcely gone when Laura opened her eyes. The frightened girl looked all around for it. She remembered how awful it had looked. But nothing was in sight—nothing but the wavering reflection of the ghost-light on the wall.
To her ears, however, came the screaming of the frightened girls on the plateau before the house. It was not alone her three comrades screaming; but the chorus of the whole party of M. O. R.’s who had given voice to their terror. And the sounds were swiftly receding. The girls were leaving her alone, bound and helpless, in this awful house!