“Let’s go find out,” said Victoria, promptly, glad to have the matter decided for her and the subject changed. “It was probably a night-hawk or an owl. It couldn’t be a man, Katherine!” The three went around the corner of the house and walked about among the shrubbery. No thought of fear entered their minds. “It is nothing, after all,” said Katherine at last. “I must have been mistaken, but it was exactly like the shadow of a man.” “Well, I am going to bed as long as your shadow isn’t going to materialize,” said Victoria; “so good night, girls!” And abruptly leaving them, she went into the house. “It is funny about Vic, isn’t it, Honor?” said Katherine. “I mean that she won’t explain why she doesn’t like Mr. Madison.” “Very, and I am going to speak to her again about it. Perhaps she would tell me more if we were alone.” “You mean without me? Why, I should like to know? However, if you do find out, you mustn’t fail to tell me, for I really am most curious about it.” CHAPTER XVI. MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS. VICTORIA went upstairs to her room, but it was long before she went to bed. Sophy was fast asleep in her little bed in the corner, and Victoria knew that there was no danger of her waking. The shades at the two windows had been drawn as high as they would go, and the moonlight streamed in, lying in white patches upon the floor and making the room as light as day. Victoria sat down in the shadow near one of the windows and looked out into the night. Her room was next to that of her aunt, and over the dining-room. Beneath her window was the shrubbery in which Katherine had heard the suspicious sounds a short time since. Beyond lay the flower garden, the beds bathed in the moonlight, and the roses lifting their heads to catch the dew. On the other side of the flower garden was the vegetable patch, and beyond that again the pasture and the woods. The window near which she sat was directly above the bay-window of the dining-room, the roof of which projected from the side of the house. Vines grew up over the dining-room window and had been trained on either side of Victoria’s, so that in summer time she looked through a veritable bower of green, and this year a pair of bluebirds had built their nest there and sometimes wakened her in the early dawn with their sweet singing. Victoria sat for a long time quite motionless. She heard her aunt come up to her room and, after a half-hour of activity, subside into the tranquillity of night. She felt it to be a merciful arrangement of human affairs and habits that people were forced to rest for a few hours out of the twenty-four, otherwise the stirring nature of Mrs. Wentworth Ward would know no calm. She heard Katherine mount to her rooms in the third story, and Honor go to hers on the other side of the house.