“I didn’t dream about the man,” insisted Tess. “He really opened the screen and looked in. See, it’s loose now!”
The screens swung outward on hinges, and there, plainly enough, the screen of one of the casements in Tess’s room was partly open.
“Perhaps the wind blew it,” suggested Agnes, wishing she could believe this.
Neale stepped over and tested the screen.
“It seems too stiff to have been blown open by the wind,” was the comment.
“But of course,” Mr. Howbridge suggested, “the screen may not have been tightly closed when Theresa went to bed.”
“Oh, yes it was, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. MacCall positively. “I looked at them myself. I didn’t want any of the mosquitoes to be eatin’ ma pretties. The screens were tight closed!”
“Oh dear, I don’t like it here!” said Tess, on the verge of tears. “I don’t want tramps looking in my room, and this man was just like a tramp.”
The noise of some one moving around on the upper deck of the craft attracted the attention of all.
“That’s Hank!” exclaimed Neale. “I’ll go and see if he heard anything unusual or saw any one. It may be that some fellow was passing along the river road and was impudent enough to pull open a screen and look in, thinking he might pick up something off a shelf.”