on was more matter-of-fact.

"Oh, let them hoot!" he said. "I am going to stay here and have a fire,
if I can find anything to burn."

While poking about at the far end of the room for more boards to break
up, he found a battered old wardrobe with double doors and called to me
to help him drag it in front of the oven.

"Going to smash that?" I asked.

"No, going to sleep in it," said he. "We'll set it up slantwise before
the fire, open the doors and lie down in it. I've a notion that it will
keep us warm, even if it isn't very soft."

The wardrobe was about four feet wide, and, after propping up the top
end at an easy slant, we lay down in it, and took turns getting up to
replenish the blaze in the oven. It was not wholly uncomfortable; but
any sense of ease that I had begun to feel was banished by a suspicion
that Addison now confided to me.

"I don't certainly know what place this is," he said, "but I'm beginning
to think that it must be the old Jim Cronin farm. I've heard that it's
over in this vicinity, away off in the woods by itself. If that's so,"
Addison went on, "nobody has lived here for eight or nine years. Cronin,
you know, kept his wife shut up down cellar for a year or two, because
she tried to run away from him. Finally she disappeared, and a good many
thought that Cronin murdered her. Folks say the old house is haunted,
but that's all moonshine. Cronin himself enlisted and was killed in the
Civil War. By the way those owls carry on up the chimney I guess nobody
ever comes here."

That account quite destroyed my peace of mind. I would much rather have
gone out with the sheep, but I did not like to leave Addison. I got up
and searched for more fuel, for I could not bear to think of letting the
fire go out. No loose boards remained except an old cleated door partly
off its hinges, which opened on a flight of dark stairs that led into
the cellar. We broke up the door and took turns again tending the fire.

"Oh, well, this isn't so bad," Addison said. "But I wonder what the old
Squire will think when he gets to Morey's place with the team and finds
that we haven't come. Hope he isn't out looking for us in the storm."

That thought was disquieting; but there was nothing we could do about
it, and so we resigned ourselves to pass the night as best we could. The
owls still hooted and chortled at times, but their noise did not greatly
disturb us now. After a while I dropped off to sleep, and I guess
Addi