So it was finally arranged that Case should walk down to New Madrid and get the needed repairs for the motors, while the others looked over the country which lay about them. When Alex. suggested the visit to the deserted house, Clay was anxious to become one of the party. He said he had had the same idea in his mind ever since seeing the old place.
“After Case goes,” Jule suggested, “that would leave only Mose and Teddy Bear on board the Rambler. I don’t believe it is safe to leave her alone.”
“Of course it isn’t,” Clay admitted, “so I’ll remain here to-day and visit the old building to-morrow. Then you two boys can remain at home.”
Everything being satisfactorily arranged, Alex. and Jule started away up the bayou in the rowboat. The old basin was full of water, and so there was little current, which made it easy rowing. In half an hour they were at the foot of an old pier, slanting over on weak legs like a tipsy man. It was plain that the landing had not been used for commercial purposes for a long time.
The boys fastened the boat and ran briskly up the rotting footway which led to the enclosure in which the old house stood. There was a wilderness of trees and shrubs in the enclosure, and the walks, which had evidently once been carefully tended, were now overgrown with weeds and long grass. Lizards darted out of unseen places and sped away as the boys advanced along a broken walk which led to the front door of the mansion.
At the very threshold the boys paused, listening. The ragged blinds were flapping in the breeze, and the trees which rimmed the enclosure rustled and creaked in a most uncanny way, but these sounds were not the ones which brought the adventurous boys to a halt.
The noise they heard sounded like the tones of a violin, coming from a great distance. The notes, faint, sweet, perplexing, rose and fell on the wind, now lifting into a weird song, now dropping to the softest melody!
“There’s some one here, after all!” Jule suggested, though there was a question in the way the words were spoken. “Some one lives here? What do you think?”
Alex. pointed to the broken door which opened into the disordered hall, to the window blinds, beating the casings at the will of the wind, and at the long grass and weeds growing between the planks and stones of the walks.
“I don’t believe any one lives here!” he insisted.