The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

in full sail on the cupola.”

      “Well, I’m going. I don’t feel easy.”

      About two hours later Rebecca returned. There were red spots on her cheeks. She looked wild. “I’ve been there,” she said, “and there isn’t a soul at home. Something has happened.”

      “What has happened?”

      “I don’t know. Something. I had a warning last night. There wasn’t a soul there. They’ve been sent for to Lincoln.”

      “Did you see anybody to ask?” asked Mrs. Dent with thinly concealed anxiety.

      “I asked the woman that lives on the turn of the road. She’s stone deaf. I suppose you know. She listened while I screamed at her to know where the Slocums were, and then she said, ‘Mrs. Smith don’t live here.’ I didn’t see anybody on the road, and that’s the only house. What do you suppose it means?”

      “I don’t suppose it means much of anything,” replied Mrs. Dent coolly. “Mr. Slocum is conductor on the railroad, and he’d be away anyway, and Mrs. Slocum often goes early when he does, to spend the day with her sister in Porter’s Falls. She’d be more likely to go away than Addie.”

      “And you don’t think anything has happened?” Rebecca asked with diminishing distrust before the reasonableness of it.

      “Land, no!”

      Rebecca went upstairs to lay aside her coat and bonnet. But she came hurrying back with them still on.

      “Who’s been in my room?” she gasped. Her face was pale as ashes.

      Mrs. Dent also paled as she regarded her.

      “What do you mean?” she asked slowly.

      “I found when I went upstairs that—little nightgown of—Agnes’s on—the bed, laid out. It was—laid out. The sleeves were folded across the bosom, and there was that little red rose between them. Emeline, what is it? Emeline, what’s the matter? Oh!”

      Mrs. Dent was struggling for breath in great, choking gasps. She clung to the back of a chair. Rebecca, trembling herself so she could scarcely keep on her feet, got her some water.

      As soon as she recovered herself Mrs. Dent regarded her with eyes full of the strangest mixture of fear and horror and hostility.

      “What do you mean talking so?” she said in a hard voice.

      “It is there.”

      “Nonsense. You threw it down and it fell that way.”

      “It was folded in my bureau drawer.”

      “It couldn’t have been.”

      “Who picked that red rose?”

      “Look on the bush,” Mrs. Dent replied shortly.

      Rebecca looked at her; her mouth gaped. She hurried out of the room. When she came back her eyes seemed to protrude. (She had in the meantime hastened upstairs, and come down with tottering steps, clinging to the banisters.)

      “Now I want to know what all this means?” she demanded.

      “What what means?”

      “The rose is on the bush, and it’s gone from the bed in my room! Is this house haunted, or what?”

      “I don’t know anything about a house being haunted. I don’t believe in such things. Be you crazy?” Mrs. Dent spoke with gathering force. The colour flashed back to her cheeks.

      “No,” said Rebecca shortly. “I ain’t crazy yet, but I shall be if this keeps on much longer. I’m going to find out where that girl is before night.”

      Mrs. Dent eyed her.

      “What be you going to do?”

      “I’m going to Lincoln.”

      A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent’s large face.

      “You can’t,” said she; “there ain’t any train.”

      “No train?”

      “No; there ain’t any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln.”

      “Then I’m going over to the Slocums’ again tonight.”

      However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even her resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then in the evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she had left nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single woman, who had come to keep her house while she was away. It was a pleasant unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related mostly how she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having pleasant weather and kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs. Greenaway, had come to stay with her since she had felt lonesome the first night in the house; how she hoped Rebecca would have no objections to this, although nothing had been said about it, since she had not realized that she might be nervous alone. The cousin was painfully conscientious, hence the letter. Rebecca smiled in spite of her disturbed mind as she read it, then her eye caught the postscript. That was in a different hand, purporting to be written by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway, informing her that the cousin had fallen down the cellar stairs and broken her hip, and was in a dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca to return at once, as she herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her properly, and no one else could be obtained.

      Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the letter quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs for the night.

      “Where did this come from?” she asked.

      “Mr. Amblecrom brought it,” she replied.

      “Who’s he?”

      “The postmaster. He often brings the letters that come on the late mail. He knows I ain’t anybody to send. He brought yours about your coming. He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat with you.”

      “I remember him,” Rebecca replied shortly. “There’s bad news in this letter.”

      Mrs. Dent’s face took on an expression of serious inquiry.

      “Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs—they were always dangerous—and she’s broken her hip, and I’ve got to take the first train home tomorrow.”

      “You don’t say so. I’m dreadfully sorry.”

      “No, you ain’t sorry!” said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped. “You’re glad. I don’t know why, but you’re glad. You’ve wanted to get rid of me for some reason ever since I came. I don’t know why. You’re a strange woman. Now you’ve got your way, and I hope you’re satisfied.”

      “How you talk.”

      Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light in her eyes.

      “I talk the way it is. Well, I’m going tomorrow morning, and I want you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to me. Don’t you wait for anything. You pack what clothes she’s got, and don’t wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket. I’ll leave the money, and you send her along. She don’t have to change cars. You start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!”

      “Very well,” replied the other woman. She had an expression of covert amusement.

      “Mind you do it.”

      “Very well, Rebecca.”

      Rebecca started on her journey the next morning. When she arrived, two days later, she found her cousin in perfect health. She found, moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the cousin’s letter. Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the next morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much for her. She was not able to move from her bed. She had a species of low fever induced by anxiety and fatigue. But she could write, and she did, to the Slocums, and she received no answer. She also