Not one of them could restrain a slight shiver of apprehension when at last they came in view of the old stone building. It was framed in a mass of trees, bushes, and weeds that threatened to engulf it from all sides. Weeds obscured the front door. Bushes grew up level with the sills of the vacant downstairs windows. Trees on either side and beyond the house extended trailing branches down over the roof. A shutter hung by one hinge from an upstairs window, and banged with every passing gust of wind. A deathlike silence hung over the old building. Under the black clouds that now filled the entire sky it was imbued with an atmosphere of gloom and terror. “Come on!” said Frank. “Now that we’re here we may as well go through the place.” “Haven’t seen any ghosts yet,” laughed Chet, with an effort at being light-hearted. But in spite of himself, his tone seemed forced. They left the motorcycles beneath a tree and advanced toward the old stone building. The front door was almost off its hinges, and it swung creakingly open at Frank’s touch. Frank stepped boldly into the hallway. The interior of the house was veiled in gloom, for the rear windows were boarded up, but the lads could see that everything was deep in dust. A staircase was before them, leading to the upper stories of the building. To the left, was a closed door. “This must be the parlor,” said Frank, as he flung the door open. The room was empty. A stone fireplace was at one side, and as the boys came into the room a rat scuttled out of the fireplace and raced across the floor, disappearing through a hole in the wall. The sound made every one jump, for the boys’ nerves were at a tension on account of the forbidding atmosphere. “Just a rat!” said Frank. His voice had the effect of calming the others. They stood hesitantly in the middle of the deserted parlor. Joe went over to the window and looked out, but the view from the front window of the Polucca place was so lonely and gruesome, in its aspect of tangled trees and weeds and undergrowth under the lowering darkness of the sky, that he came back. “Where shall we go next?” said Chet. “Nothing much to see around here,” said Frank, disappointed. “It’s just an ordinary, dirty, old, deserted house. Let’s explore upstairs, anyway—” At that moment there was a startling interruption. A weird shriek, quavering as if with terror, rang out from the upper part of the haunted house! CHAPTER II THE STORM That shriek was the most fearful and uncanny sound the boys had ever heard. There was a diabolical malignance about it, like the scream of some blood-thirsty animal, yet there was no mistaking the fact that it was uttered by a human being. As the quavering notes died away, the bare walls of the old house flung back the echoes so that the shriek seemed to be repeated again and again, but on a smaller scale.