It seemed to come from the cellar.
Miss Polly clapped both hands to her ears.

Dotty shrieked, and hid her face in her lap, and shrieked again.
"It has come! It has come!" cried she,--meaning the end of the world,--and stopped her ears.
"What, what, what!" whispered Polly, in sore affright, walking back and forth, and taking snuff as she went.

It was certainly startling to hear a pistol go off so unexpectedly, at that solemn hour, under one's very roof.

Polly naturally thought first of housebreakers.

She had barred and double-barred every door and window; but now she remembered with dreadful remorse she had not fastened the outside cellar door.