"How long have you been asleep?" he asked, coolly, as if nothing had occurred.
"Not at all," I answered. Then I thought, "I must have slept, else she could not have gone out without my knowing it."—"I heard the stroke of four and of five," I said.
He looked up and down the street, only a little lighted by the feeble, old, fading moon.
"Have you any idea where she would go?" he asked.
"She may be in the house," I said; "why not look?"
"No; I found the front-door unfastened. I thought Katie might have forgotten it, when I went to see. She has gone out, I know."
He looked for the wrappings she might have put on, searching, as he did so, for the small lamp that always was placed beside the larger one upon the table. It was gone. It had been there at four o'clock, when I put wood on the fire.
"Where would she carry a lamp?" Mr. Axtell asked, as he went on, searching, in known places, for articles of apparel that were not in their wonted homes. Having found them, he went out hurriedly, went to his own room, came out thence a moment after, with boots on his feet in place of the slippers he had frightened me with, and an overcoat across his arm. He did not seem to see me, as I stood waiting in the hall.
"Where are you going?" I asked of him, but he did not answer. He went straight on by me, and down, out of the house, closing the great hall-door after him with a force that shook the walls.
I went into the deserted room, put down the window-sash that he had left open, laid more wood upon the dying embers, caught up Miss Axtell's shawl, and, throwing it over my head, started down the stairs. It was pitch-dark, not even moonlight, there. I went back for a lamp: the only one was the heavy bronze, in the lone room. Mr. Axtell's door was open. He had left a light. I went in and took it up, with a box of matches lying near, and once more started down the stairs. How full of trembling I was! yet not afraid: there was a life, perhaps, to save. I opened the heavy oaken door. The wind put out my light. I did not need it longer. The shred of moon, hanging prophetic of doom, let out its ghastly whiteness to ghost the village.