It there! It gone!" Miss Cornelia did not want to believe him--but she did.

"Did you go out after it ?" she persisted.
Billy's yellow grin grew wider.

"No thanks," he said cheerfully with ideal succinctness.
Lizzie, meanwhile, had stood first on one foot and then on the other during the interrogation, terror and morbid interest fighting in her for mastery.

Now she could hold herself in no longer.
"Oh, Miss Neily!" she exploded in a graveyard moan, "last night when the lights went out I had a token! My oil lamp was full of oil but, do what I would, it kept going out, too--the minute I shut my eyes out that lamp would go.

There ain't a surer token of death! The Bible says, 'Let your light shine'-- and when a hand you can't see puts your lights out--good night!" She ended in a hushed whisper and even Billy looked a trifle uncomfortable after her climax.
"Well, now that you've cheered us up," began Miss Cornelia undauntedly, but a long, ominous roll of thunder that rattled the panes in the French windows drowned out the end of her sentence.