David was soon sleeping the sound sleep of healthy boyhood, and all was silent in the house, when Margaret stole softly into his room and laid her hand on his arm. He was not easy to waken, and several minutes had passed before he sat up in bed with an articulate murmur of surprise.
“Hush!” said Margaret, in a whisper, with her hand on his lips. “I want you to come into my room and listen to a sound that I have been hearing for some time.”
“Doors creaking,” suggested David, as he began to dress.
“Nothing of the kind,” was all she said.
They walked up the stairway, and along the upper hall to the door of the unused room. Something was wrong with the lock and the door would not stay fastened, as I have said.
Something that was not fear thrilled their hearts as they pushed the door further ajar, and stood where they could see every foot of the vacant floor. One of their own boxes stood in the middle of the room, but aside from that, nothing was to be seen, and they looked at one another in silence.
“Hold the lamp a minute, Maggie,” David said, at last, and then he went all over the room, and looked more particularly at its emptiness, and even felt the walls.
“Secret panels, you know,” he said, with a smile, but it was a very puzzled smile indeed.
“I can’t see what it could have been,” Margaret said, as they went down the stairs.
“No, I can’t see, either, but I’m going to see,” said David. “That was a chain, and chains don’t drag around by themselves, you know. A ghost could not drag a chain, if he were to try.”