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Almost a week had passed since the first adventure of the Boarded-up House, and nothing further had happened. Joyce and Cynthia were healthy, normal girls, full of interests connected with their school, with outdoor affairs, and with social life, so they had much to occupy them beside this curious quest on which they had become engaged.
The cottage was in the middle of the village and had but little ground to it, but there was a small, boarded-up cavity or cell at one end of an attic, and it might be possible to save him by putting him in there. Here, then, in a bed placed for him on the floor, his bruised son was obliged to lie, in the close, dark hole, for some days.
Here I've been tramping all the way from the station, a-thinking how good it would be to see Aunt Sally's sweet old face again, and hear Uncle Tom's laugh, and all I find is a boarded-up house going to seed. S'pose I might as well toddle over to Stetsons' and inquire if they haven't disappeared, too."
Out on the street, Cynthia suddenly began: "Do you know, we've never had that illumination in the Boarded-up House that we planned last fall, when we commenced cleaning up there." "We never had enough money for candles," replied Joyce. "Yes, I know. But still I've always wanted to do it. Suppose we buy some and try it soon, say to-morrow?" Joyce turned to her companion with an astonished stare.
He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were "out," and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon.
Yet, with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was in the room. In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints near the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows, was the trail made by the man himself in reaching his corner.
She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger: "You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!" Max started violently at the girl's voice. "A dead man? In there? How do you know?" In a hoarse voice the girl answered: "How do I know?
And, besides, he seems to belong to it, anyway. You know he discovered it first!" And so Goliath followed into the Boarded-up House. They began on the drawing-room. Before they had been at work very long, they found that they had "let themselves in" for a bigger task than they had dreamed.
"But, do you know, I believe, if this time is a success, we might have it again next Saturday, too." "Well, you can have it if you like, and if you can raise the money for candles," laughed Cynthia; "but you mustn't depend on me. I'll be 'cleaned out' by that time!" That morning they carefully dusted the drawing-room and library of the Boarded-up House.
As there was no other break visible in the roof, the top of this must have held the skylight, which, being thus lifted many feet above the level of the garret floor, would admit air and light enough to the boarded-up space below, but would make any effort to be heard or seen, on the part of any one secreted there, quite ineffectual.
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