coming to her senses, she could feel Betty's body
straining close up against her own and her lips almost touching her ear.

It was between two and three o'clock in the morning and the two friends
had been sleeping together in Betty Ashton's old-fashioned four-post
bed, hung with blue curtains that opened only for a space of several
feet in the center of the two sides. The room was dark and cold, for
there was no light burning and the sky outside held the blackness that
often precedes the dawn. A window was open, letting in sudden gusts of
freezing air.

"You aren't ill, are you?" Polly was about to ask when the other girl's
fingers closed over her mouth.

"Don't speak and don't stir," Betty whispered, still in almost
noiseless tones. "Just listen for a moment. Try and not be
frightened, but do you think you can hear any one moving about in this
room?"

For the first instant Polly felt a decided inclination to laugh. What
an absurd suggestion Betty was making! She must have been asleep and
dreamed something that had frightened her. It was rather to be
expected, however, after the shock of her accident at the cabin.
Therefore it would be best to gratify her fancy; and Polly set herself
to listening dutifully.

Then Polly herself started, only to feel once more the other girl's
restraining clasp. But the sound she had heard was only the banging of
the blind against the window. Nevertheless with the quick Irish
sensitiveness to impressions, to subtle suggestions, she was beginning
to have a terrifying consciousness of some other person in their
bedroom than herself and Betty. And yet she had so far heard nothing,
seen nothing.

"Look through the opening in the curtain toward the farthest end of the
room--there by the big closet door," Betty whispered. "Be perfectly
still, for I am quite sure that the figure has passed entirely around
the room twice as though it were groping for something. I can't see, I
can only hear it, and once I felt sure that a hand touched our bed."

Shadowy, terrifyingly silent, an indistinct outline was discernible
along the opposite wall and a hand moving slowly up and down it as if
searching for something. Could it be for the door of the closet only a
few feet away?

Both girls for the moment were too frightened or too surprised to stir
or to call out. The idea of jumping suddenly from the bed and running
toward the intruder had occurred to Betty, who was the more widely
a