SURPRISED BY A SLEEP WALKER.
I am not a superstitious woman, but what I saw in that doorway set my heart to thumping madly, and sent the cold shivers up and down my back. And I am not ashamed to confess how startled I was, for Dan Nugent and George Mason, the veterans of a hundred burglaries, later admitted that nothing had ever given them such a scare as this.
What we saw facing us, like a ghost, was a beautiful young woman. The filmy white night robe she wore left her snowy arms and shoulders bare and revealed her bare feet.
Her face looked pale and ghastly in the light of the kerosene lamp she carried high in one hand. The mass of jet black hair which crowned her head and hung in a long braid down her back made her pallor all the more death-like.
Her eyes were shut tight.
For a minute we stood blinking like frightened children at this uncanny, white, silent figure. Then, gradually, it dawned on us that this apparition was the cashier's eldest daughter, and that she was walking in her sleep.
As we recovered our senses it didn't take us long to see what a dangerous situation we were in. At any moment our unwelcome visitor might awaken. By the time we could bind and gag her the rest of the family might discover her absence and start in search of her.
The girl looked so innocent and helpless and so strangely beautiful that, for my part, I was heartily glad when George Mason nodded his head toward the door to indicate that we would better be going.
The two men climbed out of the window and I made my escape by the front door. The last I saw of the sleep-walking girl she was groping her way across the bank with slow cautious steps, still holding the lamp high above her head and looking more than ever like a graveyard specter.
Whether anybody except ourselves ever knew what a strange chance saved the bank from robbery that night I never heard. It was a costly experience for us as, according to what we learned later from the newspapers, that safe contained $20,000 in cash.