It was not pleasant to stand in a strange house in an unknown neighborhood, drenched, hungry and unprotected, hearing fearful sounds like danger threatening under foot.
Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?
“I heard a noise,” said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention, as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.
“It's cats, I think,” said Robert Day, husky with courage.
Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way and let every traveller fall into a pit! Or it might be some boy or girl left behind by wicked movers to starve. Or a beggarman, wanting the house to himself, could be making that noise to frighten them away.
The sharp groans were regularly uttered. Corinne buried her head in her mother's skirts and waited to be taken or left, as the Booggar pleased.
“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, “I suppose we'll have to go and see what ails that Thing down there. It may be a human bein' in distress.”
Robert feared it was something else, but he would not have mentioned it to his grandmother.
“What'll we carry to see with?” he eagerly inquired. It was easy to be eager, because they had no lights except the brands in the fireplace.
Grandma Padgett, who in her early days had carried live coals from neighbors' houses miles away, saw how to dispense with lamp or candle. She took a shovel full of embers—and placed a burning chip on top. The chip would have gone out by itself, but was kept blazing by the coals underneath.