“Jerome, I am sure something is going to happen.”
“It would be strange if something didn't. Something is happening all over the earth with every breath we draw.”
“Jerome, I mean to us!”
Jerome gave his sister a little push into her room. “Go to bed, and to sleep,” said he, “and leave your door open if you're scared, and I'll leave mine.”
Jerome himself could not get to sleep soon; once or twice Elmira spoke to him, and he called back reassuringly, but his own nerves were at a severe tension. “What has got into us all?” he thought, impatiently. It was midnight before he lost himself, and he had slept hardly an hour when he wakened with a great start.
A wild clamor, which made his blood run cold, came from below. He leaped out of bed and pulled on his trousers, hearing all the while, as in a dream, his mother's voice shrilling higher and higher. “Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel! Oh, Abel!”
Elmira, with a shawl over her night-gown, bearing a flaring candle, rushed across the landing from her room. “Oh,” she gasped, “what is it? what is it?”
“I guess mother has been dreaming again,” Jerome replied, hoarsely, but the thought was in his mind that his mother had gone mad.
“There's—cold air—coming—in,” Elmira said, in her straining voice. “The front door is—wide open.”
At that Jerome pushed her aside and rushed down the stairs and into the kitchen.