I made myself a cup of tea, and at one o’clock I stretched out on a sofa for a few hours’ sleep.  I think I had been sleeping only an hour or so, when some one touched me on the shoulder and I started up.  It was Mr. Reynolds, partly dressed.

“Some one has been in the house, Mrs. Pitman,” he said.  “They went away just now in the boat.”

“Perhaps it was Peter,” I suggested.  “That dog is always wandering around at night.”

“Not unless Peter can row a boat,” said Mr. Reynolds dryly.

I got up, being already fully dressed, and taking the candle, we went to the staircase.  I noticed that it was a minute or so after two o’clock as we left the room.  The boat was gone, not untied, but cut loose.  The end of the rope was still fastened to the stair-rail.  I sat down on the stairs and looked at Mr. Reynolds.

“It’s gone!” I said.  “If the house catches fire, we’ll have to drown.”

“It’s rather curious, when you consider it.”  We both spoke softly, not to disturb the Ladleys.  “I’ve been awake, and I heard no boat come in.  And yet, if no one came in a boat, and came from the street, they would have had to swim in.”

I felt queer and creepy.  The street door was open, of course, and the lights going beyond.  It gave me a strange feeling to sit there in the darkness on the stairs, with the arch of the front door like the entrance to a cavern, and see now and then a chunk of ice slide into view, turn around in the eddy, and pass on.  It was bitter cold, too, and the wind was rising.

“I’ll go through the house,” said Mr. Reynolds.  “There’s likely nothing worse the matter than some drunken mill-hand on a vacation while the mills are under water.  But I’d better look.”

He left me, and I sat there alone in the darkness.  I had a presentiment of something wrong, but I tried to think it was only discomfort and the cold.  The water, driven in by the wind, swirled at my feet.  And something dark floated in and lodged on the step below.  I reached down and touched it.  It was a dead kitten.  I had never known a dead cat to bring me anything but bad luck, and here was one washed in at my very feet.

Mr. Reynolds came back soon, and reported the house quiet and in order.

“But I found Peter shut up in one of the third-floor rooms,” he said.  “Did you put him there?”

I had not, and said so; but as the dog went everywhere, and the door might have blown shut, we did not attach much importance to that at the time.

Well, the skiff was gone, and there was no use worrying about it until morning.  I went back to the sofa to keep warm, but I left my candle lighted and my door open.  I did not sleep:  the dead cat was on my mind, and, as if it were not bad enough to have it washed in at my feet, about four in the morning Peter, prowling uneasily, discovered it and brought it in and put it on my couch, wet and stiff, poor little thing!