Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/27

 "No one lives there. No one has ever lived in the house; it's been empty since it was built."

"That's strange!"

"It is—very."

"But surely you can tell me something more about that."

"Why, I would if I could; but that's all I know about the house on Resurrection Rock. Just that it's there and closed."

"Let's see," he said, and he was breathing fast, she saw, as he gazed down at her; he opened his coat and was fumbling in an inner pocket when the bell of the engine and the call of the brakeman warned that the train was to start. They had wandered together half a car length from the step; and, as the train moved, he seized her arm to steady her while she ran; he half lifted her to the car step and swung on after her. She entered the coach and, proceeding up the aisle until she found where the porter from the Pullman had left her bag, she sat down beside it. The dark-haired young man halted next her; he seemed, in the last few moments, to suddenly realize the strangeness of his questions; but she thought that he had, at first, an impulse to ask her something more. But he did not; he merely said formally, "Quite all right? Have everything?"

She answered affirmatively, and he went to the seat far forward where he found his suit case and where he dropped down and sat as though dazed by his discoveries of the last minutes. People were moving in the aisle, and they shut him from Ethel's view; when she glanced at him a little later, he seemed to be intently studying some document which he held before him,—a paper from his pocket, the girl thought.