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As they all sat up on the blankets they were surprised to see their prisoner also waken and lift himself half on his elbow. He, too, seemed to be listening eagerly and to feel some sort of alarm. "Some one is coming!" said Rob. Now, indeed, there was no doubt. They heard shuffling foot-falls and many voices in some confused speech which they could not understand. "I'm afraid!" said Jesse.
While lying down here, I thought I heard the sound of the foot-falls of a galloping horse going campwards, and vague ideas of Gibson on the Fair Maid or she without him entered my head. I stood up, and listened, but the sound had died away upon the midnight air.
By and by it brought me the rollicking air my brother whistled, and then came the sound of foot-falls. In a moment he would be passing, and I arose, intending to hail him.
No young foot-falls sounded upon the stair; no boyish laughter rang out in rooms or hall. There were handsome and formal dinners occasionally, when some elderly, distinguished stranger was entertained, but there were no more merry dancing parties, with old Cy playing the fiddle and calling the figures.
They were not going out by the direct way out of the door facing the moonlight and the mining hamlet. They were passing out through the store-room in the rear. Also, there were other foot-falls cautious treadings, these as of some third person hastening to be first at the more distant door of egress.
And as he wandered under the pines or along the river, wrapped in his dreams and wondering thoughts of heaven and earth, or leaned from the window of the chamber under the low sloping roof the chamber that had been the chamber of death and looked beyond the embowering cherry trees upon the sky; or at dead of night sat under his lamp pondering over his books always, everywhere, he listened listened for the voice and the foot-falls of Virginia as he had listened in his earlier days for the voice and the footfalls of the mythical "Ligeia."
"I am almost certain," she said, "that I heard foot-falls in the house, and yet I see that you are wearing slippers." "Oh, I had on my shoes then!" "That explains it," said the woman, satisfied; "I think the sound you heard must have been caused by rats." "Ah, that was it!" exclaimed the surgeon. Leaving, he closed the door, reopened it, and said, "I do not wish to be disturbed to-day."
Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the foot-falls Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snow upon the dark stone floor.
And then he started and listened, for down on the floor below, light hurried foot-falls sped along the corridor. It was Florence hastening to her father's room. Stealthily Elmendorf sprang to the landing without, leaned over the balustrade, and bent his ear. He heard the unmistakable r-r-r-r-ing of the telephone bell, Allison's own room, too.
The husband and wife both started it was a heavy, lumbering tread not the soft foot-falls of their gentle little one, that brought music even to their dismal abode: "Some one is knocking, Mary," said the husband, and, as he spoke, the door opened, and a man appeared with a note and a basket. "Is Mrs. Grig here," asked the man.
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