This old rooster’s drowsy utterances always reminded Keith that dawn would come again and the sun with its long broom of light would sweep the room clear of its child-hating mobs. The blessed sun would explain the panther about to spring as an old rocking chair, the broom-straddling witch at the window as a tulip tree bough, the pirate with uplifted cutlass as a pile of clothes. Keith loved realism. He was educating himself in the night school to disbelieve the dark, to rely upon hard facts and distrust his terrifying fancies. A dawning scientist was evolving so fast that each week covered an æon of human experience. Besides, he had an explorer’s curiosity, a soldier’s curiosity, a willingness to bet his safety against any mystery that threatened or nagged him. He had put to flight no end of Indians, Skinners, and bogies by simply pointing his forefinger at them, snapping his trigger-thumb and observing, “Bang! bang!” To-night he quaked only a few minutes before he realized that whatever the menace was it was downstairs. His first theory was that Jud Lasher might be stealing back to make another attempt to carry Immy away. The why of Jud’s persistence baffled him—as well it might. His best guess was that Jud wanted to take Immy with him on the whaling ship that his father had commanded him to join. This thought substituted anger for terror. Keith’s little heart plunged with resentment and he slipped out of bed. The first sweat of fear chilled as he stood barefoot on the creaking floor. Then, like a child ghost in his long white nightshirt, he stole from his room to the hall. He peered into Immy’s room and saw that she was asleep in safety. He padded stealthily to his father’s room and, lifting the latch as silently as he could, swung back the door. He was stunned to find the room empty, the bed unoccupied, the covers still smooth and taut. His father might be at work in the library. He peered over the banisters, but the library door was open and no light yellowed the hall carpet as he had so often seen it when he had wakened on other occasions and made adventurous forays about the house in search of a drink or reinforcements against the armies in his room. Sometimes he had dared to steal down into the pantry and loot the cooky-jar. The thought of the pantry emboldened him now. He descended the stairway slowly with the awe of an Orpheus in Hades. The moon poured down on the front of the house; and, streaming through the glass in the front door, carpeted the lower hall with a swaying pattern of moon-dappled tree-shadows. Keith felt as if he waded a little brook of light as he flitted here and there. The sound continued, but always from below. He went at last to the cellar door. This house boasted to all passers-by that its builders had not placed the cellar out in the yard but had tucked it under the ground floor. There were two doors to the cellar, one in the kitchen, one on the outside of the house.