Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/131

Rh could the glass above have reflected the moonlight?”

It was a difficult problem to decide, but at last he made up his mind that it could. He listened a long, long time but he did not hear  a sound within, not a rustle, not a breath. It was so dark that even after his eyes got used  to the blackness, and after he had lifted himself up to peer boldly over the sill, he could  spy nothing but vague bulky shapes like boxes  or furniture.

“There is surely no one there,” he decided; “there isn’t a person in the world who knows how to keep so still as that. There hasn’t been any one there for twenty years.”

He let himself down from the sill with far less care than he had exercised in pulling himself up. One of his hands slipped a little, and he shifted it quickly along the ledge to get a better hold. As he did so his fingers touched something that lay upon the sill; it  dropped, struck one of the steps below him  and bounded to one side, then fell with  a thud upon the grass beneath. He ran down the ladder quickly and felt about on the  ground until he found it. A pair of field glasses it proved to be, quite undoubtedly the