Jan’s brows were knit; the other two followed him with instant palpitations, but close together, for all their bickering. The stairs and landing were in better case than the lower floor next the earth; the stairs were sound enough to creak alarmingly as the boys ascended them in single file. And at that all three stood still, as though they expected an upper door to open and a terrible challenge to echo through the empty house. But Jan’s was the first voice heard, as he picked up a newspaper which had been left hanging on the landing banisters. “Some sporting card’s been here before us,” said Jan. “Here’s the _Sportsman_ of last Saturday week.” A landing window with a border of red and blue glass, in peculiarly atrocious shades, splashed the boys with vivid colour as they stood abreast; but no light came from the upper rooms, all the doors being shut. Jan opened one of them, but soon left his followers behind in another room sweetened by a shattered pain. Their differences forgotten in the excitement of the adventure, these two were chatting confidentially enough when a dreadful cry brought them headlong to the door. It was Jan’s voice again; they could see nothing of him, but a large mouse came scuttling through an open door at the end of the landing, and almost over their toes. Carpenter skipped to one side, but Devereux dashed his cap at the little creature with a shout of nervous mirth. “Don’t laugh, you chaps!” said Jan, lurching into the doorway at the landing’s end. They could not see his face; the strongest light was in the room behind him, but they saw him swaying upon its threshold. “I can’t help it,” said Evan, hysterically. “Frightened by a mouse—you of all people!” Jan turned back into the room without a word, but they saw his fist close upon the handle of the door, and he seemed to be leaning on it for support as the other two came up. “Oh, I say, we must smash a window here!” Evan had cried, with the same strained merriment, when Chips, bringing up the rear, saw the other spring from Jan’s side back into the passage. Chips pushed past him, and hugged Jan’s arm. It was not another empty room; there was a tall fixed cupboard between fireplace and window, its door standing as wide open as the one where the two boys clung together; and in the cupboard hung a suit of bursting corduroys, with a blackened face looking out of it, and hobnail boots just clear of the floor. “Dead?” whispered Chips through chattering teeth. “Dead for days,” Jan muttered back. “And he’s come in here and hung himself in the haunted house!” Crashing noises came from the stairs; it was Evan in full flight, jumping many at a time. Chips was after him on the instant, and Jan after Chips when he had closed the chamber of death behind him.