“MR. RAYMOND!”
The voice was low and searching; it reached me in my dreams, waked me, and caused me to look up. Morning had begun to break, and by its light I saw, standing1 in the open door leading into the dining-room, the forlorn figure of the tramp who had been admitted into the house the night before. Angry and perplexed2, I was about to bid her be gone, when, to my great surprise, she pulled out a red handkerchief from her pocket, and I recognized Q.
“Read that,” said he, hastily advancing and putting a slip of paper into my hand. And, without another word or look, left the room, closing the door behind him.
Rising in considerable agitation3, I took it to the window, and by the rapidly increasing light, succeeded in making out the rudely scrawled4 lines as follows:
“She is here; I have seen her; in the room marked with a cross in the accompanying plan. Wait till eight o’clock, then go up. I will contrive5 some means of getting Mrs. B—— out of the house.”
Sketched6 below this was the following plan of the upper floor:
Hannah, then, was in the small back room over the dining-room, and I had not been deceived in thinking I had heard steps overhead, the evening before. Greatly relieved, and yet at the same time much moved at the near prospect7 of being brought face to face with one who we had every reason to believe was acquainted with the dreadful secret involved in the Leavenworth murder, I lay down once more, and endeavored to catch another hour’s rest. But I soon gave up the effort in despair, and contented9 myself with listening to the sounds of awakening10 life which now began to make themselves heard in the house and neighborhood.
As Q had closed the door after him, I could only faintly hear Mrs. Belden when she came down-stairs. But the short, surprised exclamation11 which she uttered upon reaching the kitchen and finding the tramp gone and the back-door wide open, came plainly enough to my ears, and for a moment I was not sure but that Q had made a mistake in thus leaving so unceremoniously. But he had not studied Mrs. Belden’s character in vain. As she came, in the course of her preparations for breakfast, into the room adjoining mine, I could hear her murmur12 to herself:
“Poor thing! She has lived so long in the fields and at the roadside, she finds it unnatural13 to be cooped up in the house all night.”
The trial of that breakfast! The effort to eat and appear unconcerned, to chat and make no mistake,—May I never be called upon to go through such another! But at last it was over, and I was left free to await in my own room the time for the dreaded14 though much-to-be-desired interview. Slowly the minutes passed; eight o’clock struck, when, just as the last vibration15 ceased, there came a loud knock at the backdoor, and a little boy burst into the kitchen, crying at the top of his voice: “Papa’s got a fit! Oh, Mrs. Belden! papa’s got a fit; do come!”
Rising, as was natural, I hastened towards the kitchen, meeting Mrs. Belden’s anxious face in the doorway16.
“A poor wood-chopper down the street has fallen in a fit,” she said. “Will you please watch over the house while I see what I can do for him? I won’t be absent any longer than I can help.”
And almost without waiting for my reply, she caught up a shawl, threw it over her head, and followed the urchin17, who was in a state of great excitement, out into the street.
Instantly the silence of death seemed to fill the house, and a dread8 the greatest I had ever experienced settled upon me. To leave the kitchen, go up those stairs, and confront that girl seemed for the moment beyond my power; but, once on the stair, I found myself relieved from the especial dread which had overwhelmed me, and possessed18, instead, of a sort of
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