“How long were you engaged at this?” asked Frank.
He was decidedly anxious to get to the heart of the story, yet realized that she must tell the tale in her own way, even though the miscreants were putting more and more distance between themselves and this place at every minute that she detailed the story.
“Oh, I suppose it was fully an hour that I sat here checking and thinking idly about different things, then——”
She proceeded with her story, about as follows:
She had heard a noise of a peculiar kind several times, but had paid no heed to it, thinking the noises were caused by the wind, coupled with the queer noises that one always hears at night. Living alone in this house for so long she had become quite accustomed to extraordinary noises, and had enjoyed herself on many occasions concentrating on some of them and guessing what they were.
“Suddenly I felt as if some one were behind me,” and she turned quickly, apprehensively, around, expecting to see some one.
“As I twisted around to see what could be behind me,” she gasped, “a man seized me by my shoulders and another placed a hand over my mouth. I screamed as I jerked and for a moment freed myself from his grasp over my mouth. But in a second he again placed his hand over my mouth, the other hand going around my throat, and I could not even breathe.”
“Then they placed you in the pantry?” asked Frank.
“Yes, they dragged me over there, one of them tied a rag around my face, to gag me, and then they bound my hands and feet.”
“How did you get the gag off so that you could scream so loudly—for we were attracted by your screams?”