Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/117

 rafters. In the yard he stopped and looked around him. Not a creature was to be seen or heard. He went up to the low dwelling-house, entered the passage, and knocked twice at a door to the left. No one answered.

After a moment's hesitation he opened the door and went into the broad, low-ceilinged living room, with its equipment of antique furniture, which had attracted his attention on yonder evening. The room was empty. Nor was any sound to be heard in the adjoining rooms except the loud ticking of the tall old clock in the side room where the girl had lain ill. He was at his wit's end. He knocked at various doors leading to different parts of the house, but he received no answer anywhere. The house appeared to be deserted. He remained standing a moment in the middle of the floor, lost in thought, while his eye wandered over the room. He recognised the heavy oak table and the benches under the small, many-paned windows, the large square stove, the dark earthen floor strewn with sand, the spinning wheel, and the blue striped curtains of the alcove bed in one corner of the room. A row of shining pewter plates stood upon a high shelf, and upon the wall behind the old armchair by the stove, by way of ornament, hung a cross of straw, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two framed samplers, bearing the date of 1798. All bore witness to a sense of order and scrupulous cleanliness. An air of