CHAPTER V
A NEW EXPERIENCE

With the closing in of the fog, twilight settled about the cabin. The old woman, still in her black bonnet with the veil thrown back, drew a wooden armed chair close to the stove and held her hands out toward the warmth. “Open up the box of supplies, Dories,” she commanded, “and get out some candles. Then you can fill a hot-water bottle for me and I’ll go right to bed. No use making a fire in the front room until tomorrow. You girls are to sleep upstairs. You’ll find bedding in a bureau up there. It may be damp, but you’re young. It won’t hurt you any.”

Dories, having opened up the box of supplies, removed each article, placing it on the table. At the very bottom she found a note scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper: “Out of candles. Send some tomorrer.”

Miss Moore sat up ramrod-straight, her sharp gray eyes narrowing angrily. “If that isn’t just like that shiftless, good-for-nothing Simon Strait. How did he suppose we could get on without light? I wish now I had ordered kerosene, but I thought, just at first, that candles would do.” In the dusk Nann had been looking about the kitchen. On a shelf she saw a lantern and two glass lamps. “O, Miss Moore!” she exclaimed, “Don’t you think maybe there might be oil in one of those lamps?”

“No, I don’t,” the old woman replied. “I always had my maid empty them the last thing for fear of fire.” Nann, standing on a chair, had taken down the lantern. Her face brightened. “I hear a swish,” she said hopefully, “and so it must be oil.” With a piece of wrapping paper she wiped off the dust while Dories brought forth a box of matches.

A dim, sputtering light rewarded them. “It won’t last long,” Nann said as she placed the lantern on the table, “So, Miss Moore, if you’ll tell us what to do to make you comfortable, we’ll hurry around and do it.”

“Comfortable? Humph! We won’t any of us be very comfortable with such a wet fog penetrating even into our bones.” The old woman complained so bitterly that Dories found herself wondering why her Great-Aunt Jane had come at all if she had known that she would be uncomfortable. But she had no time to give the matter further thought, for Miss Moore was issuing orders. “Dories, you work that pump-handle over there in the sink. If it needs priming, we won’t get any water tonight. Well, thank goodness, it doesn’t. That’s one thing that went right. Nann, you rinse out the tea kettle, fill it and set it to boil. Now you girls take the lantern and go to my bedroom. It’s just off the big front room, so you can’t miss it; open up the bottom bureau drawer and fetch out my bedding. We’ll hang it over chairs by the stove till the damp gets out of it.”

Nann took the sputtering lantern and, being the fearless one of the two, she led the way into the big front room of the cabin. The furniture could not be seen for the sheetlike coverings. In the dim light the girls could see a few pictures turned face to the wall. “Oh-oo!” Dories shuddered. “It’s clammily damp in here. Think of it, Nann, can you conceive what it would have been like for me if I had come all alone with Aunt Jane? Well, I know just as well as I know anything that I would never have lived through this first night.”

Nann laughed merrily. “O, Dori,” she exclaimed as she held the lantern up, “Do look at this wonderful, huge stone fireplace. I’m sure we’re going to enjoy it here when we get things straightened around and the sun is shining. You see if we don’t.” Nann was opening a door which she believed must lead into Miss Moore’s bedroom, and she was right. The dim, flickering light revealed an old-fashioned hand-turned bed with four high posts. Near was an antique bureau, and Dori quickly opened the bottom drawer and took out the needed bedding. With her arms piled high, she followed the lantern-bearer back to the kitchen. Miss Moore had evidently not moved from her chair by the stove. “Put on another piece of wood, Dori,” she commanded. “Now fetch all the chairs up and spread the bedding on it.”

When this had been done, the teakettle was singing, and Nann said brightly, “What a little optimist a teakettle is! It sings even when things are darkest.”

“You mean when things are hottest,” Dori put in, actually laughing.

The old woman was still giving orders. “The dishes are in that cupboard over the table,” she nodded in that direction. “Fetch out a cup and saucer, Dories, wash them with some hot water and make me a cup of tea. Then, while I drink it, you can both spread up my bed.”

Fifteen minutes later all these things had been accomplished. The old woman acknowledged that she was as comfortable as possible in her warm bed. When they had said good-night, she called, “Dories, I forgot to tell you the stairway to your room leads up from the back porch.” Then she added, as an afterthought, “You girls will want to eat something, but for mercy sake, do close the living-room door so I won’t hear your clatter.”

Nann, whose enjoyment of the situation was real and not feined, placed the sputtering lantern on the kitchen table while Dories softly closed the door as she had been directed. Then they stood and gazed at the supplies still in boxes and bundles on the oilcloth-covered table. “I never was hungrier!” Dories announced. “But there isn’t time to really cook anything before the light will go out. Oh-oo! Think how terrible it would be to have to climb up that cold, wet outside stairway to a room in the loft and get into cold, wet bedding, and all in the dark.”

Nann laughed. “Well, I’ll confess it is rather spooky,” she agreed, “and if I believed in ghosts I might be scared.” Then, as the lantern gave a warning flicker, the older girl suggested: “What say to turning out the light and make more fire in the stove? It really is quite bright over in that corner.”

“I guess it’s the only thing to do,” Dori acknowledged dolefully. “O goodie,” she added more cheerfully as she held up a box of crackers. “These, with butter and some sardines, ought to keep us from starving.”

“Great!” Nann seemed determined to be appreciative. “And for a drink let’s have cambric tea with canned milk and sugar. Now the next thing, where is a can opener?”

She opened a drawer in the kitchen table and squealed exultingly, “Dories Moore, see what I’ve found.” She was holding something up. “It’s a little candle end, but it will be just the thing if we need a light in the night when our oil is gone.”

“Goodness!” Dories shuddered. “I hope we’ll sleep so tight we won’t know it is night until after it’s over.”

Nann had also found a can opener and they were soon hungrily eating the supper Dories had suggested. “I call this a great lark!” the older girl said brightly. They were sitting on straight wooden chairs, drawn close to the bright fire, and their viands were on another chair between them.

“The kitchen is so nice and warm now that I hate plunging out into the fog to go upstairs,” Dori shudderingly remarked. “I presume that is where Aunt Jane’s maid used to sleep. Mumsie said she had one named Maggie who had been with her forever, almost. But she died last June. That must be why Aunt Jane didn’t come here this summer.”

When the girls had eaten all of the sardines and crackers and had been refreshed with cambric tea, they rose and looked at each other almost tragically. Then Nann smiled. “Don’t let’s give ourselves time to think,” she suggested. “Let’s take a box of matches. You get one while I relight the lantern. I have the candle end in my pocket. Now, bolster up your courage and open the door while I shelter our flickering flame from the cold night air that might blow it out.”

Dories had her hand on the knob of the door which led out upon the back porch, but before opening it, she whispered, “Nann, you don’t suppose that ghost over in the ruin ever prowls around anywhere else, do you?”

“Of course not, silly!” Nann’s tone was reassuring. “There isn’t a ghost in the old ruin, or anywhere else for that matter. Now open the door and let’s ascend to our chamber.”

The fog on the back porch was so dense that it was difficult for the girls to find the entrance to their boarded-in stairway. As they started the ascent, Nann in the lead, they were both wondering what they would find when they reached their loft bedroom.

CHAPTER VI
A LIGHT IN THE DARK

The girls cautiously crept up the back stairway which was sheltered from fog and wind only by rough boards between which were often wide cracks. Time and again a puff of air threatened to put out the flickering flame in the lantern. With one hand Nann guarded it, lest it suddenly sputter out and leave them in darkness. There was a closed door at the top of the stairs, and of course, it was locked, but the key was in it.

“Doesn’t that seem sort of queer?” Dories asked as her friend unlocked the door, removed the key and placed it on the inside.

“Well, it does, sort of,” Nann had to acknowledge, “but I’m mighty glad it was there, or how else could we have entered?”

Dories said nothing, but, deep in her heart, she was wishing that she and Nann were safely back in Elmwood, where there were electric lights and other comforts of civilization.

Holding the lantern high, the girls stood in the middle of the loft room and looked around. It was unfinished after the fashion of attics, and though it was quite high at the peak, the sloping roof made a tent-like effect. There were two windows. One opened out toward the rocky point, above which a continuous inward rush of white breakers could be seen, and the other, at the opposite side, opened toward swampy meadows, a mile across which on clear nights could be seen the lights of Siquaw Center.

A big, old-fashioned high posted bed, an equally old-fashioned mahogany bureau and two chairs were all of the furnishings.

They found bedding in the bureau drawers, as Miss Moore had told them. Placing the lantern on the bureau, Nann said: “If we wish to have light on the subject, we’d better make the bed in a hurry. You take that side and I’ll take this, and we’ll have these quilts spread in a twinkling.”

Dories did as she was told and the bed was soon ready for occupancy. Then the girls scrambled out of their dresses, and, just as they leaped in between the quilts, the flame in the lantern sputtered and went out.

Dories clutched her friend fearfully. “Oh, Nann,” she said, “we never looked under the bed nor behind that curtained-off corner. I don’t dare go to sleep unless I know what’s there.”

Her companion laughed. “What do you ’spose is there?” she inquired.

“How can I tell?” Dories retorted. “That’s why I wish we had looked and then I would know.”

Her friend’s voice, merry even in the darkness, was reassuring. “I can tell you just as well as if I had looked,” she announced with confidence. “Back of these curtains, you would find nothing but a row of nails or hooks on which to hang our garments when we unpack our suitcases, and under the bed there is only dust in little rolled-up heaps – like as not. Now, dear, let’s see who can go to sleep first, for you know we have an engagement with our friend, Gibralter Strait, at sunrise tomorrow morning.”

“You say that as though you were pleased with the prospect,” Dories complained.

“Pleased fails to express the joy with which I anticipate the – ” Nann said no more, for Dories had clutched her, whispering excitedly, “Hark! What was that noise? It sounds far off, maybe where the haunted ruin is.”

Nann listened and then calmly replied: “More than likely it’s the fog horn about which Gib told us, and that other noise is the muffled roar of the surf crashing over the rocks out on the point. If there are any more noises that you wish me to explain, please produce them now. If not, I’m going to sleep.”

After that Dories lay very still for a time, confident that she wouldn’t sleep a wink. Nann, however, was soon deep in slumber and Dories soon followed her example. It was midnight when she awakened with a start, sat up and looked about her. She felt sure that a light had awakened her. At first she couldn’t recall where she was. She turned toward the window. The fog had lifted and the night was clear. For a moment she sat watching the white, rushing line of the surf, then, farther along, she saw a dark looming object.

Suddenly she clutched her companion. “Nann,” she whispered dramatically, “there it is! There’s a light moving over by the point. Do you suppose that’s the ghost from the old ruin?”

“The what?” Nann sat up, dazed from being so suddenly awakened. Then, when Dories repeated her remark, her companion gazed out of the window toward the point.

“H’m-m!” she said, “It’s a light all right. A lantern, I should say, and its moving slowly along as though it were being carried by someone who is searching for something among the rocks.”

Dori’s hold on her friend’s arm became tighter. “It’s coming this way! I’m just ever so sure that it is. Oh, Nann, why did we come to this dreadful place? What if that light came right up to this cottage and saw that it wasn’t boarded up and knew someone was here and – ”

Nann chuckled. “Aren’t you getting rather mixed in your figures of speech?” she teased. “A lantern can’t see or know, but of course I understand that you mean the-well-er-person carrying the lantern. I suppose you will agree that it is a person, for ghosts don’t have to carry lanterns, you know.”

“How do you know so much about ghosts, since you say there are no such things?” Dori flared.

“Well, nothing can’t carry a lantern, can it?” was the unruffled reply. Then the two girls were silent, watching the light which seemed now and then to be held high as though whoever carried it paused at times to look about him and then continued to search on the rocks.

Slowly, slowly the light approached the row of boarded-up cabins. The girls crept from bed and knelt at the window on the seaward side. Nann, because she was interested, and Dori because she did not want to be left alone.

“Do you think it’s coming this far?” came the anxious whisper. Nann shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s going back toward the point and so I’m going back to bed. I’m chilled through as it is.”

They were soon under the covers and when they again glanced toward the window the light had disappeared. “Seems to have been swallowed up,” Nann remarked.

“Maybe it’s fallen over the cliff. I almost hope that it has, and been swept out to sea.”

“Meaning the lantern, I suppose, or do you mean the carrier thereof?”

“Nann Sibbett, I don’t see how you can help being just as afraid of whatever it is, or, rather of whoever it is, as I am.”

“Because I am convinced that since it, or he, doesn’t know of my existence, I am not the object of the search, so why should I be afraid? Now, Miss Dories Moore, if you wish to stay awake speculating as to what became of that light, you may, but I’m going to sleep, and, if this loft bedroom of ours is just swarming with ghosts and mysterious lights, don’t you waken me to look at them until morning.”

So saying, Nann curled up and went to sleep. Dories, fearing that she would again be awakened by a light, drew the quilt up over her head so that she could not see it.

Although she was nearly smothered, like an ostrich, she felt safer, and in time she too slept, but she dreamed of headless horsemen and hollow-eyed skeletons that walked out on the rocky point at midnight carrying lanterns.

It was nearing dawn when a low whistle outside awakened the girls.

“It’s Gibralter Strait, I do believe,” Nann declared, at once alert. Then, as she sprang up, she whispered, “Do hurry, Dori. I feel ever so sure that we are this day starting on a thrilling adventure.”