"It's not so very early, Peter," answered the Squire. "It is almost seven o'clock."
"Is that so? Well, I declare! I wonder why Jacob isn't up. He's mostly an early riser, and as he's the boy amongst us, why we old folks—Betsy and me—rely on him to wake us up in the mornings. Old people, you know, get back to being like babies again for wanting their good sleep. But Jacob has overslept himself this morning, sure. I'll soon roust him out, though."
As he spoke he went to a closed door at one side of the central sitting-room, which was flanked by the separate apartments of the brothers, and pounding upon it with his bony knuckles, called:
"Come, Jacob, bounce out, boy! You're late! It's breakfast time, and we've got visitors. Get up!"
There was no answering sound from within. He waited a moment, then knocked again, shouting: "Hello, Jacob! Jake! I say, get up! What' the matter with you?"
Still there was no response. The three men waiting, held their breath to listen, and a vague sense of uneasiness crept over them. The songs of the blue-birds, and the chirp of the martens; the humming of the bees; the stamping of the horse hitched to the gig, and the clatter old Betsy made in opening her door, were all sharply distinct in the quiet summer morning air; but from the closed room there was no sound whatever. Peter tried the door, but it did not yield.
"He's locked his door!" exclaimed the old man, with an intonation of surprise in his voice.
"Maybe something has happened to him," suggested Lem.
"What could happen to him? He was all right last night; never better in his life. And he's younger than me. But it's queer he should have locked his door. He don't mostly." He continued rapping and shouting "Jacob, wake up!" in a more and more anxious tone.
"The key isn't in the keyhole, I guess," he muttered half to himself, fumbling at the lock with a bit of stick he picked up from the floor, "but," stooping down and trying to peer through, "I can't see anything, because it's all dark inside."