CHAPTER XVII

ONLY A BAT

The three girls sat quiet, every nerve tense, that same chilly sensation creeping up their spines, and their hair beginning to stand on end.

Out there in that wilderness, at three o’clock in the morning, a noise that sounded something like a motor car and yet was unlike anything they had ever heard before, might have frightened more experienced people than three fourteen-year-old girls.

“H-here it comes!” whispered Violet, clutching at Laura’s arm, while Laura in her turn clutched at Billie’s.  “It’s coming closer!  Oh, girls—­is it in the house?”

“Sh!” cried Billie.  “It’s a machine—­it must be a machine—­out on the road.”

“But in this forsaken place, in the middle of the night?” cried Laura, beginning to shiver as though she were cold.  “It—­it can’t be, Billie!”

“Sh-h,” said Billie again.  “Listen!”

The purring sound was coming closer, seemed almost in the house, it was so near—­Then came an awful thought to Billie.  Could it really be in the house?  Was it possible that those awful stories about ghosts were true?

But no, the noise was passing on, getting softer, softer, dying off in the distance.

“It—­it must have been a machine,” said Laura, beginning to laugh hysterically.  “Vi, what did you go and wake me up in the middle of the night for just to hear an automobile?  I was having such a lovely sleep.”

“But I’m not so sure it was a motor car,” insisted Violet stubbornly, the spell of the dream still upon her.  “It didn’t sound like it.”

“But it couldn’t have been anything else,” said Billie, trembling a little with the reaction.  “We heard it coming down the road, heard it pass the house, and go on.  It simply must have been a machine.”

“Oh, all right,” said Violet, adding with a little sigh:  “Well, I guess none of us will sleep any more to-night.  I’m not even going to try.”

“Well, I am,” said Billie, leaning back and closing her eyes, yet knowing that she was as wide awake as she had ever been in her life.  “I don’t see any use in lying here and listening for things.  Good night once more, girls—­I’m off.”

“Meaning you’re crazy?” asked Laura, to which Billie made no reply.

As a matter of fact, even while they were saying they could sleep no more that night, the girls did go to sleep, and, what is more, slept soundly until they were awakened by Mrs. Gilligan’s voice calling to them from the connecting doorway.

“Do you expect to sleep all day?” she was asking them, her face rosy and herself very nice and trim in a light blue house dress.  “This is the third time I’ve spoken to you, and I was beginning to get worried.”

“Wh-what time is it?” demanded Laura sleepily.

“About eleven,” Mrs. Gilligan answered calmly, and they gasped.

“Eleven!” repeated Billie, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes hard.  “For goodness’ sake, how did it get that way?  I feel as if I hadn’t had any sleep at all.”