They stood in silence, both listening intently. Somewhere a board creaked, and Marsland could hear the wind blowing, but that was all.
“I do not think it was anything,” he said reassuringly. “These old houses have a way of creaking and groaning in a gale. You have become nervous through sitting here by yourself.”
“Perhaps that is so,” she assented in a friendlier tone than she had hitherto used. “But I thought—in fact, I felt—that somebody was moving about stealthily overhead.”
“It was the wind sighing about the house,” he said, sitting down again.
As he spoke, there was a loud crash in a room above—a noise as though china or glass had been broken. Marsland sprang to his feet.
“There is somebody in the house,” he exclaimed.
“Who can it be?” she whispered.
“Probably some one who has more right here than we have,” said Marsland soothingly. “He’ll come downstairs and then we’ll have to explain our presence here.”
“The man who lives here is away,” she replied, in a hushed tone of terror. “He lives here alone. If there is anybody in the house, it is some one who has no right here.”
“If you are sure of that,” said Marsland slowly, “I will go and see what has happened in the room above. The wind may have knocked something over. Will you stay here until I return?”