He stopped for a moment in perplexity and considered what he would better do. He might strike off into the woods in the direction in which he thought Schooley’s to be, but he was by no means certain of the direction, and the most probable result of such a course would be to get lost and miss his way entirely. The road he was following must certainly lead to a house; there were wagon tracks and hoof-prints on it which seemed fresh, so he concluded that the best thing he could do was to push forward as rapidly as possible, find the house to which the road led, and then, if he was any considerable distance from Schooley’s, hire a vehicle of some sort to take him on to his destination. He walked on more rapidly, after that, following the road as it turned and twisted among the trees. The ground grew uneven and at last actually hilly, and the road grew worse and worse. Allan began to fear that it led only to a wood-lot or outlying field, and was more than once tempted to turn back, seek the railroad track and follow it into Schooley’s. But always he resolved to go around the next corner and the next, and finally his perseverance was rewarded. For there, almost hidden behind a screen of trees, with hills protecting it on either side, stood an old stone house. Heartened by this discovery, Allan hurried forward, and yet, as he drew near, he hesitated, for there was about the place something indescribably desolate and dreary—something almost threatening. The windows across the front of the house were all closed by heavy shutters. There were five of them, one on either side of the door in the lower story, and three in the story above. The house was square and solidly built, but had fallen into neglect and decay. The roof was covered with moss, and the path to the front door broken and uneven. There was a tumble-down barn some distance back of it and one or two other decrepit outbuildings, from which, however, came no sign of life. Allan, for a moment, thought the house deserted, too; then his eyes caught a faint streamer of smoke which drifted sluggishly upward from one of the chimneys, and, encouraged by this sign of human occupancy, he hastened forward and knocked at the front door. There was no response, and he knocked again more loudly. Still there was no response, though he fancied that he detected a sort of uneasy movement inside the house, as though some one were moving cautiously along the hall, and he had a sensation as though some one was staring out at him. It was a sensation anything but pleasant, as every one who has experienced it knows, and it required no little resolution for him to carry his quest further. But he resolutely shook away the feeling of uneasiness, and, leaving the front door, he proceeded around the house, determined to try a door at the back. He knew that there was some one in the house and he determined to have him out.