She saw the door tremble from the blows delivered 77 upon it. There was nothing spiritual about that.
“Whatever it is––”
To punctuate her observation Jessie Norwood lifted the iron latch and jerked open the door. It was dusky in the stairway and she could not see a thing. But almost instantly there tumbled out upon the kitchen floor something that brought shriek after shriek from Jessie’s lips.
“Hi!” cried Henrietta. “Did it bite you?”
Jessie did not stop to answer. She seized her skirt drying before the fire and wrapped it around her bare shoulders as she ran through the outer door. She left behind her writhing all over the kitchen floor a pair of big blacksnakes.
The fighting snakes hissed and thumped about, wound about each other like a braided rope. Probably the warmth of the fire passing up the chimney had stirred the snakes up, and it was evident that they were in no pleasant frame of mind.
“What is it? Ghosts?” cried Amy Drew, standing in the rain.
“It’s worse! It’s snakes!” Jessie declared, looking fearfully behind her, and in at the door.
She had dropped the stick with which she had so valiantly faced the unknown. But when that unknown had become known—and Jessie had always been very much afraid of serpents—all the girl’s valor seemed to have evaporated. 78
“Mercy!” gasped Amy. “What’s going on in there? Hear that thumping, will you?”