Timid little Grace heard, with great satisfaction, that all these were to be so near; and Lulu, though not at all cowardly, was well pleased with the arrangement.  Yet she little thought how severely her courage was to be tested that night.

She and Grace had scarcely laid their heads upon their pillows ere they fell into profound slumber.  Lulu did not know how long she had slept, but all was darkness and silence within and without the house, when something, she could not have told what, suddenly roused her completely.

She lay still, trying to recall the events of the past day and remember where she was; and just as she succeeded in doing so a strange sound, as of restless movements and the clanking of chains, came from beneath the bed.

Her heart seemed to stand still with fear; she had never before, in all her short life, felt so terrified and helpless.

“What can it be?” she asked herself.  “An escaped criminal—­a murderer—­or a maniac from an insane asylum, I suppose; for who else would wear a clanking chain? and what can he want here but to kill Gracie and me?  I suppose he got in the house before they shut the doors for the night, and hid under the bed till everybody should be fast asleep, meaning to begin then to murder and rob.  Oh, I do wish I’d looked under the bed while all the gentlemen were about to catch him and keep him from hurting us!  But now what shall I do?  If I try to get out of the bed, he’ll catch hold of my foot and kill me before anybody can come; and if I scream for help, he’ll do the same.  The best plan is to lie as quiet as I can, so he’ll think I’m still asleep; for maybe he only means to rob, and not murder, if nobody wakes up to see what he’s about and tell of him.  Oh, I do hope Gracie won’t wake! for she could never help screaming; and then he’d jump out and kill us both.”

So with heroic courage she lay there, perfectly quiet and hardly moving a muscle for what seemed to her an age of suffering, every moment expecting the creature under the bed to spring out upon her, and in constant fear that Grace would awake and precipitate the calamity by a scream of affright.

All was quiet again for some time, she lying there, straining her ears for a repetition of the dreaded sounds; then, as they came again louder than before, she had great difficulty in restraining herself from springing from the bed and shrieking aloud, in a paroxysm of panic terror.

But she did control herself, lay perfectly still, and allowed not the slightest sound to escape her lips.

That last clanking noise had awakened Elsie, and she too now lay wide awake, silent and still, while intently listening for a repetition of it.  She hardly knew whence the sound had come, or what it was; but when repeated, as it was in a moment or two, she was satisfied that it issued from the room where Lulu and Grace were, and her conjectures in regard to its origin coincided with Lulu’s.