“I can hear it as plain as anything, Amy. Do you suppose it is the maple-tree back of the window?”
“Of course it’s the maple-tree,” Ruth replied in a husky whisper. How she envied Amy. Amy frankly acknowledged to being a coward, and poor Ruth wished that she herself did not have a reputation for courage to sustain. For certainly that sound was not the whisper of the wind in the boughs of the maple. It was in the room, apparently at the foot of the bed.
A long silence followed Ruth’s bravely mendacious assurance. Amy lay down at length and drew the coverlet over her head. The thumping of Ruth’s heart gradually steadied into an ordinary beat. Just as she was telling herself that Amy’s foolish fancies had made her nervous, and she had imagined the peculiar sound, her heart jumped again. Amy’s shivering body suddenly huddled against hers, gave convincing testimony to the fact that Ruth’s ears were not the only ones to catch something unusual.
“What do you suppose it is?” choked Amy.
This time Ruth made no attempt to hold the maple-tree responsible. “I don’t know,” she whispered. The sound that vibrated through the room was such as might be produced if a finger-nail were drawn across the window screen. The thought entered Ruth’s mind, that perhaps some one was trying to enter the room by the window, and supernatural horrors paled beside this possibility.
But this demonstration also was succeeded by a puzzling silence. Gradually the tense muscles of the two frightened girls relaxed, and they ventured to exchange perplexed comments on the mysterious interruptions to the peace of the night. “It certainly was the screen,” declared Amy. “Do you suppose that the wind blowing through it could make a noise like that?”
Ruth did not think it likely, but forbore to say so, and after half an hour of quiet, weariness again asserted itself and she began to feel agreeably drowsy. Then Amy caught her arm and with the startled pinch, Ruth’s hopes of sleep were indefinitely postponed.
“There it is again,” said Amy, her teeth fairly chattering. “There’s that rustling.”
“Sh!” Ruth whispered back and her hand found Amy’s in the dark. This time the rustling continued. It was a curiously elusive sound, as difficult to locate as to understand. At one minute it seemed at the foot of the bed, and again off in the corner of the room, and once Ruth was almost sure that it was over her head. And that was the time when it seemed to her that her heart must stop beating.
“Ruth!” Amy snatched away her hand in her consternation. “Ruth–I’m going to sneeze!”