He winked at his wife. He thought that if Skimpy were present he himself would hear more of the whereabouts of the box, which might prove of service in the constable’s search for it, when the ladder could be found or a substitute provided. He walked toward the primitive stairway, feeling very clever and a trifle surprised at the promptitude and acumen of his decision. He himself would wake Skimpy in order to give him a quiet caution not to become involved in any quarrel that might restrain or prevent Ike’s disclosure. He tramped slowly and heavily up the ladder as if he were not used to it, and indeed he seldom ascended into the roof-room, its chief use being that of a dormitory for the boys. As he left the bright scene below, suffused with mellow light, the shadows began to gloom about him as if they came down a rung or two to meet him or to lend him a helping hand; he raised his eyebrows and peered curiously about. His head was hardly above the level of the floor of the loft before he became aware that the roof-room was full of motion. He gave a sudden start, and stood still to stare, to collect his senses that surely had played him false. No,—solemnly wavering to and fro, a pace here, a measure there, was the gaunt company of old clothes, visible in the glimmer through the crevices of the floor, and bearing the semblance of life in the illusions of the faint light and the failing shadow, as if they had outwitted fate somehow, despite their owners’ mounds in the little mountain graveyard. Peter Sawyer gasped—then he shivered. And it was, perhaps, this involuntary expression of physical discomfort which led his mind to judge of cause and effect. “The winder mus’ be open,” he said through his chattering teeth. The next moment he saw it—he saw the purplish square amidst the darkness of the walls; the naked boughs of the tree without; and high, high—for he was looking upward—the massive looming mountain, and the moon, the yellow waning moon, rising through the gap in the range. “The wind’s laid,” he muttered, “or the flappin’ o’ that thar shutter would hev woke the boy afore this time.” He clumsily ascended the remaining rungs and strode across the floor to Skimpy’s bed, looking now with curious half-averted eyes at the lifelike figures of the old clothes, and then at the yellow moon shining through the little window into the dusky place, and drawing the shadow of the neighboring tree upon the floor. Sawyer’s hand touched the pillow. “Skimpy!” he said. And again, “Skimpy!” It was a louder tone. A penetrating quality it had, charged as it was with a sudden, keen fear. “Fetch a light!” he cried, running to the top of the ladder, dashing away the spectral garments. “Fetch the lantern, Oby, or a tallow dip.” Below they heard his quick footsteps returning to the bed as they sprang up, affrighted, yet hardly knowing what had happened.