“Yes, and startle every one. I almost screamed when I heard the noise, and then I thought I’d come in to you.”
“I’m glad you did. Can you hear it now?”
They were out in the hall, and could see the light that was kept aglow in the bath room. Cora switched off her electric.
“I don’t hear it,” affirmed Belle. “The noise has stopped.”
It had, that was certain. The silence of the night outside was broken only by the distant roar of the waterfall, a sound with which by this time the girls had become so familiar that they did not notice it unless they listened especially for it, as the receiver of a wireless message must be tuned to catch the wave impulses of a certain length.
“I can’t hear it,” said Cora, breathing softly, as Belle was doing.
There was no more noise.
“Could it have been distant thunder?” asked Cora, when a minute passed in silence—and a long minute it seemed to the waiting ones.
Belle stepped to the window and looked out and up at the sky.
“The stars are shining,” she said. “If there is a storm it is a distant one, and one that far off wouldn’t sound so near. I don’t believe it was thunder.”