Suddenly Janet wakened. She could hear the rain pouring again. But there was a movement. Slowly the comforter began to slide from her. How strange! The cold chills began to play up and down Janet’s spine. Could there be a burglar? She lay still, her face in the pillow.
Now more swiftly the cover was drawn off. It was gone. A flash of lightning, dimly lighting the room from under the shades and curtains of the window, disclosed a moving form at the foot of the bed. Janet, who had lifted her head to see, again pressed her face into the pillow. She listened for the opening of the door, but there was no sound from that direction.
A faint noise somewhere, like the little click of a latch, perhaps,—and Janet lay still for a long time, hearing nothing but the rain and the boom of distant thunder. Janet remembered that she had slid fast a small, curious brass bolt at the door when she went to bed. How could any one enter there? Possibly there was some other entrance, but she had not noticed any.
It was some time before Janet dared to sit up in bed and finally to slip from under the covers and run to where the electric button was. Flash! On came the light and Janet was at the door, ready to run if there were any menacing presence in the room. The bolt was still in position, as she had left it when locking up!
On the chair by the bed was her bath robe; beneath lay her slippers. These all she donned and went to the windows. They were still only a trifle raised, and now Janet threw them up as high as they would go. No one had entered there, though the curious little balcony, with vines beginning to leaf out, shone wet with the rain and the light from Janet’s room.
There were two doors besides the one which led into the hall. Of these two, one opened into a closet, the other into a bathroom. Janet did not know whether that had been there in the old days or not but she fancied that it might have dated back to her mother’s time. After her uncle’s brief talk at supper about the old Dutch homes and habits and the early days of New York history, Janet was beginning to feel as if she were a part of a long line, indeed, and her curiosity was aroused about all these little details.
She opened the closet door. There hung her dresses. Her hats were upon the shelf. She reached back to the wall. No door there. The bathroom, blue and white and prettily tiled, offered no solution to the mysterious visitor who had carried off the comforter.
“No ghost,” said Janet to herself, “could carry off a thick blue comforter!” But it was funny,—queer. Had the comforter been anywhere in the room, she might have thought it a dream. Yet she certainly did not dream those cold chills, or that odd feeling when slowly the cover was drawn off. But at least the intruder, ghost or not, had not harmed her in any way.
Little birds began to sing outside and a gray dawn was breaking. Janet crept back into bed, refreshed by the air from the wide open windows. At once she fell asleep, not to waken till Paulina rapped loudly on her door to waken her in time for breakfast.