“Of course he isn’t,” Adele exclaimed. “There’s no one in our Secret Sanctum but just ourselves.”
The girls, finding it hard to overcome an uncanny feeling, nevertheless entered the cabin and began to make definite plans for the party which they were going to give for Granny Dorset, when suddenly there was a strange clinking noise in the wall.
Rosamond sprang to her feet, her eyes wide and startled. “What was that?” she asked. The other girls stood up and listened. They distinctly heard a scurrying and then another clinking sound.
“It must be a chipmunk or a ground-squirrel,” Adele said, trying to speak calmly.
“I would think so myself,” Bertha replied, “but for the other noise,—the clinking. How could a squirrel make that?”
The girls examined the wall, and Gertrude exclaimed, “Why, this seems to be a boarded-up fireplace.”
“Yes, and here is a loose board,” Bertha said, “so now the mystery will be explained.”
The bark-covered boards were easily pried away and a stone-lined fireplace was disclosed. There were wood-ashes on the floor of it, but no squirrel, and nothing that would clink.
“Look!” Gertrude said. “Here is a hole through which a squirrel might have gone.”
Adele peered up the blackened chimney. There was a rude stone ledge just above her head, and suddenly, with a frightened chirr, a chipmunk jumped from the ledge to the floor and darted into the meadow through the hole which Gertrude had seen.