CHAPTER I.
DOWNSTAIRS IN THE DARK
Elsie pushed away the bed-clothes which were covering her ear, and listened; then she sat up in bed, and listened again.
There was no doubt that it was an actual sound, and not mere imagination. How long it had been going on, or when it first began to mingle in a confused manner with her dreams, she could not say; but now she heard it plainly enough, and recognized what it was – the peculiar, grating hiss of a grindstone, punctuated every now and then with a subdued little squeak made by the treadle.
Who on earth should want to be grinding anything at that time of night?
The Pines was a rambling old house; the girls always slept with their window open; and just below was an outbuilding, part of which was used as a tool-house, in which stood the grindstone; and thus the sound had reached Elsie at a moment when perhaps her slumber was not as deep as usual. The noise continued, with pauses at regular intervals, when whatever was being sharpened was removed from the stone. Taking care not to disturb her elder sister, Ida, whose heavy breathing showed that she was sound asleep, the little girl slipped out of bed, and crept softly over to the window. By straining her neck, and pressing her cheek close against the pane, she could just get a glimpse of the tool-house window, which she noticed was faintly illuminated, as it might have been by the feeble rays of a night-light.
A sudden thought occurred to Elsie that it must be her cousin, Brian Seaton, who lived at the Pines, and went to school with her brother Guy. Brian was always boat-building; sometimes he sat up later than he ought to have done, and continued to work long after every one else was in bed. No doubt the rascal was doing so now, and had stolen down to put a fresh edge on his chisel. Elsie was a spirited young monkey, and she and Brian were great chums.
"I'll just creep down and show him I've found him out," she said to herself. "What fun to take him by surprise!"
To put on dressing-gown and slippers was but the work of a few moments. Softly opening the bedroom door, she passed out on to the landing, and groping in the darkness until she found the rail of the banisters, she proceeded down the stairs.
How still and quiet the house seemed! Nothing broke the silence but the solemn "tick-tack" of the big clock in the hall, which had been ticking in the same sedate manner since the days when Elsie's grandmother had been a little girl. Feeling her way down the length of the hall, not without an occasional bump against chairs and other such obstacles, Elsie came to a little lobby or cloak-room, having at the farther end a half-glass door, which opened on the yard, and from which the tool-house was distant not more than a dozen paces. She quite expected to find this door open, and was surprised to discover that it was not only shut, but locked on the inside.
"What a beggar Brian is!" thought the girl. "He must have climbed out of his window, and come down the water-pipe, as he did one day last summer."
She laid her hand on the key, when a low growling noise gave her quite a little fright, until she remembered that it was the old clock in the hall preparing to strike – "clearing his throat," as Ida called the operation. The next moment the bell struck —
"Ting! ting!"
Elsie listened with a gasp of astonishment; the old clock ignored the halves and quarters, so the time must be two o'clock in the morning! She never remembered having been up so early or so late before, and the thought that she was wandering about the house at that unearthly hour made her feel quite queer.
"What can Brian be about?" she murmured. "He can't have been sitting up working till this time."
She turned the handle of the door, and stepped across the threshold. The cold night air made her shiver, the whir of the grindstone came clear and distinct from the tool-house, and the window still gleamed with the same subdued, ghostly light. Elsie had intended to rush across the flagstones, fling open the door, shout "Brian, go to bed!" and then herself beat a hasty retreat; but, just when she was on the point of doing so, she hesitated.
What if it shouldn't be Brian after all? And if it were not her cousin, who or what could be there in the tool-house turning the grindstone at two o'clock in the morning?
It is when we pause to think that fear often takes hold of us. Elsie was a brave child; but, somehow, just then her courage seemed to desert her. She remained for an instant listening to the whispering of the night wind, and the mysterious sound which had first roused her from her slumbers; then she drew back in sudden panic, locked the door as if in the fear of some lion, and went quickly back the way she had come.
"Tick-tack! tick-tack!" muttered the old clock. He never felt afraid at having to stand alone all night in the darkness. Elsie hurried past him, and after one or two stumbles on the stairs, regained her bedroom.
"Ida! Wake up!"
"Every one of my sums is right," murmured Ida drowsily. "You can always get them right with a blue pencil."
