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When they returned, he was apparently half-asleep again, and he mumbled a prompt acceptance of the woman’s proposal that he should go to bed at once. She led him around the front of the house to the kitchen porch, and the kitchen light was still the only one to be seen. Of the kitchen itself he looked only at the doors. One that was closed evidently led to the dining-room and the rest of the house; one that was open showed the stairs to the upper floor; a third was the back door to the yard; a fourth under the staircase might be the door of a pantry.

She lighted a candle and ushered him upstairs to a tiny room that had a sloping ceiling, a single window in the gable end, and no door except the door to the stairs. At that side of the room in which there should have been a door communicating with the other rooms of the upper floor, there was a blank partition-wall of rough plaster. It was a satisfactory