“The Painted Lady!” Corp whispered.

“Stroke!” Tommy replied, as cautiously.  He was excited rather than afraid, and had the pluck to cry, “Wha’s that?  I see you!”—­but no answer came back through the mist, and now the boys had a double reason for pressing forward.

“Can you see the house, Corp?”

“It should be here about, but it’s smored in rime.”

“I’m touching the paling.  I ken the road to the window now.”

“Hark!  What’s that?”

It sounded like devil’s music in front of them, and they fell back until Corp remembered, “It maun be the door swinging open, and squealing and moaning on its hinges.  Tommy, I take ill wi’ that.  What can it mean?”

“I’m here to find out.”  They reached the window where Tommy had watched once before, and looking in together saw the room plainly by the light of a lamp which stood on the spinet.  There was no one inside, but otherwise Tommy noticed little change.  The fire was out, having evidently burned itself done, the bed-clothes were in some disorder.  To avoid the creaking door, the boys passed round the back of the house to the window of the other room.  This room was without a light, but its door stood open and sufficient light came from the kitchen to show that it also was untenanted.  It seemed to have been used as a lumber-room.

The boys turned to go, passing near the front of the empty house, where they shivered and stopped, mastered by a feeling they could not have explained.  The helpless door, like the staring eyes of a dead person, seemed to be calling to them to shut it, and Tommy was about to steal forward for this purpose when Corp gripped him and whispered that the light had gone out.  It was true, though Tommy disbelieved until they had returned to the east window to make sure.

“There maun be folk in the hoose, Tommy!”

“You saw it was toom.  The lamp had gone out itself, or else—­what’s that?”

It was the unmistakable closing of a door, softly but firmly.  “The wind has blown it to,” they tried to persuade themselves, though aware that there was not sufficient wind for this.  After a long period of stillness they gathered courage to go to the door and shake it.  It was not only shut, but locked.

On their way back through the Double Dykes they were silent, listening painfully but hearing nothing.  But when they reached the Coffin Brig Tommy said, “Dinna say nothing about this to Elspeth, it would terrify her;” he was always so thoughtful for Elspeth.

“But what do you think o’t a’?” Corp said, imploringly.

“I winna tell you yet,” replied Tommy, cautiously.

When they boarded the Ailie, where the two girls were very glad to see them again, the eight-o’clock bell had begun to ring, and thus Tommy had a reasonable excuse for hurrying his crew to the Cuttle Well without saying anything of his expedition to Double Dykes, save that he had not seen Grizel.  At the Well they had not long to wait before Mr. McLean suddenly appeared out of the mist, and to their astonishment Miss Ailie was leaning on his arm.  She was blushing and smiling too, in a way pretty to see, though it spoilt the effect of Stroke’s statement.