His eyes began to dance with mischief, like a child's, and he crept along the path with big cat strides, half doubled up, and holding his breath, lest he should laugh aloud. “The sweet creatures! A man shouldn't frighten them, though,” he thought. When he reached the porch he went down on all fours, and began mewing like a mournful tom-cat near to the bottom of the door. Then he listened with his ear to the jamb. He expected a faint cry of alarm, the raucous voice of Nancy Joe, and the clatter of feet towards the porch. There was not a sound. “She's upstairs,” he thought, and stepped back to look up at the front of the house. There was no light in the rooms above. “I know what it is. Nancy is not home yet, and Kirry's fallen asleep at the rocking.” He stole up to the window and tried to look into the hall, but the blind was down, and he could not see much through the narrow openings at the sides of it. “She's sleeping, that's it. The house was quiet and she dropped off, rocking the lil one, that's all.” He scraped a handful of the light gravel and flung a little of it at the window. “That'll remind her of something,” he thought, and he laughed under his breath. Then he listened again with his ear at the sill. There was no noise within. He flung more gravel and waited, thinking he might catch her breathing, but he could hear nothing. Then rising hurriedly and throwing off his playfulness, he strode to the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. He returned to the window. “Kate!” he called softly. “Kate! Are you there? Do you hear me? It's Pete. Don't be frightened, Kate, bogh!” There was no response. He could hear the beat of the sea on the shore. The dog had perched himself on one end of the window sill and was beginning to whine. “What's this at all? She can't be out. Couldn't take the child anyway. Where's that Nancy? What right had the woman to lave her? She has fainted, being left alone; that's what's going doing.” He tried to open the window, but the latch was shot. Then he tried the other windows, and the back door, and the window above the hall, which he reached from the roof of the porch; but they would not stir. When he returned to the hall window, the white blind was darker. The lamp inside the room was going out. The moonlight was dripping down on him through the leaves of the trees. He found some matches beside his pipe in his side pocket, struck one, and looked at the sash, then took out his clasp knife to remove the pane under the latch. His hand trembled and shook and burst through the glass with a jerk. It cut his wrist, but he felt the wound no more than if it had been the glass instead of his arm that bled. He thrust his hand through, shot back the latch, then pushed up the sash, and clambered into the room past the blind. The cat, sitting on the ledge inside, rubbed against his hand and purred. “Kirry! Kate!” he whispered.