of those directions, she thought of her discussion of them with him—how he had showed her his ring, their long walk together, the delight of their delay in the little cabin and their impromptu luncheon of tea and crackers. Her shoulders jerked in a spasm of feeling, and she went on rapidly to the house.
The north end was the rear, and the door on that side opened, she supposed, into a kitchen. The house, which was perhaps forty feet wide and somewhat longer in its north and south dimension, was an adaptation of a châlet type, having two floors under a low, gracefully sloping roof which spread wide eaves over the front and back. There was no penthouse or projection at the rear; a couple of steps led to a solid door flanked by windows which were closed and locked, but which had curtains hanging within and shades raised about halfway. Ethel kept glancing at these windows as she approached; she found a bell handle beside the door and, pulling it, she heard a bell jangling within.
It roused no response; so she pulled several times and had Asa pound the door with the butt of his rifle. He shouted, and the dogs excitedly leaped about and barked loudly; but no one answered; no one appeared at a window; the whole house was still. Ethel led Asa around to the west side. She knew that the front of the house was so close to the edge of the Rock that the front door faced only a small platform at the top of a stairway cut in the rock and communicating with another platform, just above the lake level, which evidently was planned as a landing stage for small boats in summer. The west door, accordingly, was the main entrance, and Ethel found there a heavy, varnished oak door with three long lights set vertically
