Page:Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car.djvu/168

158 for the various ghostly manifestations. That they were the work of some one endeavoring to depreciate the value of the property, she was certain.

"That man may have hired some girl who looks like me to help him," she thought, "and she may have become afraid, or worried, and left. Then I have to blunder in here, and in the dark he takes her for me. I'm sure that's it."

Then came a change of mood.

"But what is the use of speculating and guessing about it?" Mollie mused. "I had much better see if there is a way out. Oh, joy! A window—two of them!"

She approached the casements, realizing that as she was on the ground floor the sills could not be very high from earth. But though she saw that the catches on the frames were broken, and though she managed to raise one sash, it was with a jolt of disappointment that she saw the windows vere heavily barred.

"A regular prison!" gasped Mollie. "This must have been a most peculiar house—barred windows. No wonder people shun it. Ugh! It gives me the creeps."

She flashed her lamp on the wooden sill, into which the iron rods were screwed. Then a wave