The old woman was standing in the middle of the outer room, grinning at him with what was meant for complacency, but which struck him at once as genuine malevolence.
"Ha, ha!" she croaked.

"You fool! You fool! Search! Smell him out! All the good it will do you! Ha, ha!" "By gad, I _will_ get at the bottom of this!" shouted Truxton, stubborn rage possessing him.

"There's some one here, and I know it.

I'm not such a fool as to believe--Say! What's that?
The ceiling! By the eternal, that scraping noise explains it! There's where the secret trap-door is--in the ceiling! Within arm's reach, at that! Watch me, old woman! I'll have your spry friend out of his nest in the shake of a lamb's tail." The hag was standing in the kitchen door now, still grinning evilly.

She watched the eager young man pound upon the low ceiling with a three-legged stool that he had seized from the floor.
"I don't see how he got up there so quickly, though.