wooden slats. “Fancy sleeping on those!” said Eve.

“We may come to it!” I returned miserably.

The blinds were closed as they had been below, and the two windows in the bedroom were nailed fast. The windows in the other rooms—there were five in all—were the same. Whoever had been assigned the task of closing up the old Craven House had made a thorough job of it.

We returned finally to the large front room. I slumped down on a wooden rocker by the window. My legs felt extraordinarily weak and if I had been fasting for a week, I could not have been hungrier. I was amazed to see by my wrist watch that it was only a little after two. I had thought it hours later.

Eve had gone back to the window. I watched her dismally as she fussed with the fastening. “I’m going to look for a hammer,” she announced presently.

“Hammer?” I repeated dully as if I were unfamiliar with the implement.

She nodded. “You’ve noticed of course the difference between these windows and the ones downstairs?”

“I noticed that they’re all nailed down—isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, but the ones below are nailed from the outside but these are done from within. Consequently the nails are all in plain sight.”

“You mean——” I jumped up. She was right. “How clever of you to notice that,” I exclaimed. “But do you think we can ever get ’em out—they look awfully deep in and they’re rusty besides?”

“I’m going to try anyway,” she returned. “Let’s go downstairs and take a look for some tools.”

For the first time since I had heard that back door close, I felt a faint glimmer of hope. In a little room off the kitchen filled with all manner of household odds and ends, we found a tool box and in it a hammer, brown and rusty with disuse, but still a hammer.

Well, it was exactly a quarter of three when Eve set to work on those nails. It was five minutes past before the first one even budged. And it was nearly four before we got the second one out. Then followed a long struggle with the window itself. “I’ll bet those old Cravens never did have any fresh air,” I panted. “No wonder they’re all dead—” I was pounding the sash with my fist in an effort to loosen it.

“How d’you know they’re all dead? Here, let me have another try.” Eve 

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