Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and
on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell
what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?
"I heard a noise," said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention,
as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.
"It's cats, I think," said Robert Day, husky with courage.
Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures
of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's
mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half
murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way
and let every traveller fall into a pit! Or it might be some boy or
girl left behind by wicked movers to starve. Or a beggarman, wanting
the house to himself, could be making that noise to frighten them
away.
The sharp groans were regularly uttered. Corinne buried her head in
her mother's skirts and waited to be taken or left, as the Booggar
pleased.
"Well," said Grandma Padgett, "I suppose we'll have to go and see
what ails that Thing down there. It may be a human bein' in distress."
Robert feared it was something else, but he would not have mentioned
it to his grandmother.
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