"Well, child, just go over it now quietly."
The light died out of Ella's eyes, and her face saddened. But she complied with the request, not dwelling very minutely upon the particulars. The vicar and Maria listened to her in silence.
"It is the most unaccountable thing I ever heard of," cried the vicar, impulsively, when it was over. "Locked up in her room, and disappeared! Is there a trap-door in the floor?"
Ella shook her head.
"The waxed boards of the room are all sound and firm."
"And she could not have come out of her room and got out of the house, you say?"
"No. It was not possible. She had a bad headache, as I tell you, and I told her she had better go to bed; that was about nine o'clock. While she was folding up the child's petticoat she had been sewing at, Aaron came into the room to say that Uncle Gilbert was asking for me. Katherine lighted both the bed candles, which were on a tray outside, and we left the room together. I ran into my own room and caught up my prayer-book, for sometimes my uncle lets me read the evening psalms to him. Katherine was going into her room as I ran out; she wished me goodnight, went in, and locked the door."
"Locked it!" exclaimed the vicar. "A bad habit to sleep with the door locked. Suppose a fire broke out!"
"I used to tell her so, but she said she could not feel safe with it unlocked. She and Susan were once frightened in the night when they were little girls, and had locked their door ever since. I went down to Uncle Gilbert," continued Ella. "Aaron was then bolting and barring the house-door--and, considering that he always carries away the key in his own pocket, you will readily see that poor Katherine had no chance of getting out that way."
"There was the backdoor," said the vicar, who, to use his own words, could not see daylight in this story. "Your great entrance-door is, I know, kept barred and locked always."