Page:Long pack, or, The robbers discovered (3).pdf/6

6 better out of your way," I said e, " and safer, if you will be so kind as lock it by in some room or closet." "She then led him into a low parlour, where he placed it care. fully on two chairs, and went away, wishing Alice a good night. When old Alice and the pack were left together in the large house by themselves, she felt a kind of undefined terror come over her mind about it. " What can be in it " said she to herself, “that makes it so heavy surely when the man carried it this length, he might have carried it farther too. ---It is a confoundedly queer pack; I'll go and look at it once again, and see what I think is in it; and suppose I should handle it all round, I may then perhaps have a good guess what is in it.” Alice went cautiously and fearfully into the parlour and opened a wall-press---she wanted nothing in the press, indeed she never looked into it, for her eyes were fixed on the pack, and the longer she looked at it she liked it the worse; and as to handling it, she would not have touched it for all that it contained. She came again into the kitchen and conversed with herself. She thought of the man's earnestness to leave it---of its monstrous shape, and every cir- cumstance connected with it: they were all mysterious, and she was convinced in her