At the top of the stairs was another hall, long and narrow, extending apparently the whole length of the house.  At intervals along this hall were doors.  One after the other Thankful opened them.  The first gave entrance to a closet, with a battered and ancient silk hat and a pasteboard box on the shelf.  The next opened into a large room, evidently the spare bedroom.  It was empty.  So was the next and the next and the next.  No furniture of any kind.  Thankful’s hope of finding a quilt or a wornout blanket, anything which would do to cover her sleeping and shivering relative, grew fainter with the opening of each door.

There were an astonishing number of rooms and closets.  Evidently this had been a big, commodious and comfortable house in its day.  But that day was long past its sunset.  Now the bigness only emphasized the dreariness and desolation.  Dampness and spider webs everywhere, cracks in the ceiling, paper peeling from the walls.  And around the gables and against the dormer-windows of these upper rooms the gale shrieked and howled and wailed like a drove of banshees.

The room at the very end of the long hall was a large one.  It was at the back of the house and there were windows on two sides of it.  It was empty like the others, and Mrs. Barnes, reluctantly deciding that her exploration in quest of coverings had been a failure, was about to turn and retrace her steps to the stairs when she noticed another door.

It was in the corner of the room furthest from the windows and was shut tight.  A closet, probably, and all the closets she had inspected so far had contained nothing but rubbish.  However, Thankful was not in the habit of doing things by halves, so, the feebly sputtering lantern held in her left hand, she opened the door with the other and looked in.  Then she uttered an exclamation of joy.

It was not a closet behind that door, but another room.  A small room with but one little window, low down below the slope of the ceiling.  But this room was to some extent furnished.  There was a bed in it, and a rocking chair, and one or two pictures hanging crookedly upon the wall.  Also, and this was the really important thing, upon that bed was a patchwork comforter.

Thankful made a dash for that comforter.  She set the lantern down upon the floor and snatched the gayly colored thing from the bed.  And, as she did so, she heard a groan.

There are always noises in an empty house, especially an old house.  Creaks and cracks and rustlings mysterious and unexplainable.  When the wind blows these noises are reenforced by a hundred others.  In this particular house on this particular night there were noises enough, goodness knows.  Howls and rattles and moans and shrieks.  Every shutter and every shingle seemed to be loose and complaining of the fact.  As for groans—­old hinges groan when the wind blows and so do rickety gutters and water pipes.  But this groan, or so it seemed to Mrs. Barnes, had a different and distinct quality of its own.  It sounded—­yes, it sounded human.