Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/210

 yet—but joy doesn’t kill. It would have been cruel to stop her, even if I could.”

“Is little Allan all right?” asked Ilse.

“He will be. The poor kid was at the point of exhaustion, naturally. He wouldn’t have lasted for another day. We carried him right up to Dr. Matheson at the Bridge and left him in his charge. He won't be fit to be brought home before tomorrow.”

“Have you any idea how he came to be there?”

“Well, he couldn’t tell us anything, of course, but I think I know how it happened. We found a cellar window about half an inch open. I fancy that Allan was poking about the house, boy fashion, and found that this window hadn’t been fastened. He must have got entrance by it, pushed it almost shut behind him and then explored the house. He had pulled the closet door tight in some way and the spring lock made him a prisoner. The window was too high for him to reach or he might have attracted attention from it. The white plaster of the closet wall is all marked and scarred with his vain attempts to get up to the window. Of course, he must have shouted, but nobody has ever been near enough the house to hear him. You know, it stands in that bare little cove with nothing near it where a child could be hidden, so I suppose the searchers did not pay much attention to it. They didn’t search the river banks until yesterday, anyhow, because it was never thought he would have gone away down there alone, and by yesterday he was past calling for help.”

“I’m so—happy—since he’s found,” said Ilse, winking back tears of relief.

Grandfather Bradshaw suddenly poked his head out of the sitting-room doorway.

“I told ye a child be lost in the nineteenth century,” he chuckled.

“He was lost, though,” said Dr. McIntyre, “and he wouldn’t have been found—in time—if it were not for this young lady. It’s a very extraordinary thing.”

“Emily is—psychic,” said Ilse, quoting Mr. Carpenter.

“Psychic! Humph! Well, it’s curious—very. I don’t