"I seem to hear a summons from the Witches' Cave," murmured Helen in an awed whisper as a sound like the wind whistling through pine trees fell on their ears, resolving itself as they listened into the words, "Come! Come! Come!"
Quietly they arose and tiptoed their way toward the dining room. They could only enter it by penetrating the thicket of boughs that barred the door. As they came nearer the voice retreated—"Almost as if it were going into the kitchen," whispered Margaret to Tom who happened to be next to her. The only light in the room came from a pan of alcohol and salt burning greenly in a corner and casting an unnatural hue over their faces. The black cats, their eyes touched with phosphorus, glared down from the plate rail.
Again the voice was heard:—"Gather, gather about the festal board."
"We must obey the witches," urged Helen, and they sat down in the chairs which they found placed at the table in just the right number. Into the dim room from the kitchen came two figures dressed in long black capes and pointed red hats and bearing each a dish heaped high with cakes of some sort.
"I just have to tell you what these are," said Ethel Brown in her natural voice as she and Ethel Blue marched around the table and placed one dish before Roger at one end and another before Helen at the other. "It's sowens."
"Sowens? What in the world are sowens?" everybody questioned.
"Grandfather told us that Burns says that sowens eaten with butter always make the Hallowe'en supper, so we looked up in the Century Dictionary how to make them and this is the result."
"Do you think they're safe?" inquired Della.
"There's a doctor here to take care of us if anything happens," laughed James. "I'm game. Give me a chance at them."
Roger and Helen began a distribution of the cakes.