She stared at the white sheet of the window, with its black bars like railings and its ghostly hinting of a moon that would soon be up above the trees.
Every noise frightened her, the working of the "separator" in a distant part of the farm, the whistling of some farm-hand out in the yard, the voice of some boy, "coo-ee"-ing faintly, the lingering echo of the vanished day--all these seemed to accuse her, to point fingers at her, to warn her of some awful impending punishment.

"Ah! you're the little girl," they seemed to say, "who lost Jeremy's dog and broke Jeremy's heart." She was sure that someone was beneath her bed.

That old terror haunted her with an almost humorous persistency every night before she went to sleep, but to-night there was a ghastly certainty and imminence about it that froze her blood.

She crouched up against the hanging skirts, gazing at the black line between the floor and the white sheets, expecting at every second to see a protruding black mask, bloodshot eyes, a coarse hand.

The memory of the burglary that they had had in the spring came upon her with redoubled force.