There was a crash of thunder and then the rain began drumming on the roof of the porch. Jessie looked out. The clearing about the house had darkened speedily. A sheet of rain came drifting across the lake toward the hillock on which the house stood.
“Do shut the door, Jessie,” begged Amy Drew.
“How ridiculous!” Jessie said again. “You can’t shut the windows. There!”
Another lightning flash blinded the girls and the thunder following fairly deafened them for the moment. But Jessie did not leave her post in the doorway. Something at the edge of the clearing—some rods away, at the verge of the thick wood—had impressed itself on Jessie’s sight just as the lightning flashed.
“Come away! Come away, Jess Norwood!” shrieked Amy.
“Come here,” commanded Jessie. “Look. Don’t be foolish. See that thing moving down there by the woods? Is it a human being or an animal?”
“Oh, Jessie! Maybe it is a ghost,” murmured Amy.
But her curiosity overcame her fears sufficiently for her to join Jessie at the doorway. Through the falling rain the chums were sure that something was moving down by the woods.
“It’s a dog,” said Amy, after a moment.
“It’s a child,” declared Jessie, with conviction. “I saw its face then.”