"That"s all right. But Gypsies _do_ carry off people----"
"And eat them?" scoffed Tom. "How silly, Nell!"
"Well, Mr. Smartie! they might hold us for ransom."
"Like regular brigands, eh?" returned Tom, lightly. "That _would_ be an adventure worth chronicling."
"You can laugh----Oh!"
As she was speaking, Helen saw a head thrust out of the bushes not far along the road they traveled.
"What"s the matter?" demanded Ruth, seizing her arm.
"Look there!" But the car was past the spot in a moment. "Somebody was watching us, and dodged back," declared Helen, anxiously.
"Oh, nonsense!" laughed her brother.
But before they took the next turn they looked back and saw two men standing in the road, talking. They were rough-looking fellows.
"Gypsies!" cried Helen.
However, they saw n.o.body else for a few miles. Now they were skirting one of the lakes in the upper chain, some miles above the gorge where the dam was built, and the scenery was both beautiful and rugged. There were few farms.
On a rising stretch of road, the engine began to miss, and something rattled painfully in the "internal arrangements" of the car. Tom looked serious, stopped several times, and just coaxed her slowly to the summit of the hill.
"Now don"t tell us that we"re going to have a breakdown!" cried Helen.
"Do you think those are thunder-heads hanging over the mountain?" asked Ruth, seriously.
"Sure of it!" responded Helen.
"You are a regular "calamity howler"!" exclaimed Tom. "By Jove! this old mill _is_ going to kick up rusty."
"There"s a house!" cried Ruth, gaily, standing up in the back to look ahead. "Now we"re all right if the machine has to be repaired, or a storm bursts upon us."
But when the car limped up and stopped in the sandy road before the sagging gate, the trio saw that their refuge was a windowless and abandoned structure that looked as gaunt and ghostly as a lightning-riven tree!
CHAPTER VII
FELLOW TRAVELERS
"Well! this is a pretty pickle!" groaned Tom, at last as much disturbed as Helen had been. "It"s no use, girls. We"ll have to stop here till the storm is over. It is coming."
"Well, that will be fun!" cried Ruth, cheerfully. "Of course we ought to be storm-bound in a deserted house. That is according to all romantic precedent."
"Humph! you and your precedent!" grumbled her chum. "I"d rather it was a nice roadside hotel, or tearoom. That would be something like."
"Come on! we"ll take in the hamper, and make tea on the deserted hearthstone," said Ruth. "Tom can stay out here and repair his old auto."
"Tom will find a shelter for the machine first, I reckon. There! hear the thunder? We are going to get it, and I must raise the hood of the tonneau, too," proclaimed the lad. "Go on with your hamper and wraps. I see sheds back there, and I"ll try to coax the old Juggernaut into that lane and so to the sheds."
He did as he proposed during the next few minutes, while the girls approached the deserted dwelling, with the hamper. The lower front windows were boarded, and the door closed. But the door giving entrance from the side porch was ajar.
""Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,"" quoted Helen, peering into the dusky interior. "It looks powerful ghostly, Ruthie."
"There are plenty of windows out, so we"ll have light enough," returned the girl of the Red Mill. "Don"t be a "fraid cat," Helen."
"That"s all right," grumbled her chum. "You"re only making a bluff yourself."
Ruth laughed. She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might have made her shriek and run!
Into the house stepped Ruth Fielding, in her very bravest manner. The hall was dark, but the door into a room at the left--toward the back of the house--was open and through this doorway she ventured, the old, rough boards of the floor creaking beneath her feet.
This apartment must have been the dining-room. There was a high, ornate, altogether ugly mantle and open fireplace at one end of the room. At the other, there stood, fastened to the wall, or built into it, a china closet, the doors of which had been removed. These ugly, shallow caverns gaped at them and promised refuge to spiders and mice. On the hearth was a heap of crusted gray ashes.
"What a lonesome, eerie sort of a place," shivered Helen. "Wish the old car had kept running----"
"Through the rain?" suggested Ruth, pointing outside, where the air was already gray with approaching moisture.
Down from the higher hills the storm was sweeping. They could smell it, for the wind leaped in at the broken windows and rustled the shreds of paper still clinging to the walls of the dining-room.
"This isn"t a fit place to eat in," grumbled Helen.
"Let"s go above stairs. Carry that alcohol stove carefully, dear. We"ll have a nice cup of tea, even if it does----"
"Oh!" shrieked Helen, as a long streak of lightning flew across their line of vision.
"Yes. Even in spite of _that_," repeated Ruth, smiling, and raising her voice that she might be heard above the cannonade of thunder.
"I don"t like it, I tell you!" declared her chum.
"I can"t say that I do myself, but I do not see how we are to help it."
"I wish Tom was inside here, too."
Ruth had glanced through the window and seen that Master Tom had managed to get the auto under a shed at the back. He was industriously putting up the curtains to the car, and making all snug against the rain, before he began to tinker with the machinery.
There was a faint drumming in the air--the sound of rain coming down the mountain side, beating its "charge" upon the leaves as it came. There were no other sounds, for the birds and insects had sought shelter before the wrathful face of the storm.
Yes! there was one other. The girls had not heard it until they began climbing the stairs out of the side entry. Helen clutched Ruth suddenly by the skirt.
"Hear that!" she whispered.
"Say it out loud, dear, do!" exclaimed the girl of the Red Mill. "There is never anything so nerve-shaking as a stage whisper."