“And now, here I am all alone,” she told herself. “Wonder where the others are?”
“They are in there alone with that strange man,” she told herself. “How—how terrible!”
That she could do nothing about it she knew well enough, and was troubled about their safety.
“If anything serious should happen to them I never could forgive myself!” she thought with a little tightening at the throat. “They are such good pals. And it was I who proposed that we go on that wild chase, I who really insisted.”
She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable indeed about the whole affair.
She and Pearl had been pals for a long time. In the same Sunday School class and the same grade at school, they were always together. At the beach, swimming, boating and fishing in summer, tramping and skating in winter, they shared their joys and sorrows.
“And now,” she asked herself, “where is she? And where is Betty?”
Relighting her candle, she turned about to go inside and search for them.
“No use,” she told herself. “Place is a perfect labyrinth, passages running up and down, this way and that. Never would find them. Have to wait. Have—”
She broke short off. Had she caught some sound? Were they coming? Or, was it some other person, the man of the face in the fire? She shrank back against the wall, then called softly: