CHAPTER I

THE EMPTY HOUSE

Katherine Adams stepped from the train at Oakwood, glanced expectantly up

and down the station platform, hesitated a moment, and then, picking out

a conspicuous spot under a glaring arc light, deposited her suitcase on

the ground with a thump, mounted guard beside it and patiently waited for

Nyoda to find her in the surging crowd.

It was two days before Christmas, and travel was heavy. It seemed as

though the entire population of Oakland was either coming home,

departing, or rushing madly up and down before the panting train in

search of friends and relatives. Katherine was engulfed in a tidal wave

of rapturous greetings that rolled over her from every side, as a

coachful of soldiers, home for Christmas, were met and surrounded by the

waiting lines of townspeople.

Katherine stood still, absorbed in watching the various reunions taking

place around her, while the tidal wave gradually subsided, receding in

the direction of Main Street. The principal stream had already flowed

past her and the crowd was rapidly thinning out when Katherine woke to

the realization that she was still unclaimed. There was no sign of Nyoda.

The expectant smile faded from Katherine's face and in its place there

came a look of puzzled wonder. What had happened? Why wasn't Nyoda there

to meet her? Was there some mistake? Wasn't this Oakwood? Had she gotten

off at the wrong station, she thought in sudden panic. No, there was the

sign beside the door of the green boarded station; its gilded letters

gleamed down reassuringly at her. Katherine stood on one foot and

pondered. Was this the day she was supposed to come? What day was it,

anyway? The thick pad calendar beside the ticket seller's window inside

the station proclaimed it to be the twenty-third. All right so far; she

hadn't mixed up the date, then. She had written Nyoda that she would come

on the twenty-third, on the five-forty-five train. The train had been on

time. Where was Nyoda?

Katherine was assailed by a sudden doubt. Had she mailed that letter?

Yes, she was certain of that. She had run out to the mail box at ten

o'clock at night especially to mail it. What had gone wrong? Why wasn't

there someone to meet her?

She looked around at the walls as if expecting them to answer, and her

roving eye caught sight of the lettering on a glass door opposite. The

telephone! Goose! Why hadn't she thought of that before? Of course there

was some mistake responsible for Nyoda's not meeting her, but in a moment

that would be all straightened out.

She sprang across to the booth and picked up the directory hanging beside

the telephone. Then a queer, bewildered look came into her eyes and she

stood still with the book hanging uncertainly from her fingers. She had

forgotten Nyoda's name! She twisted her brows into a pucker and made a

frantic effort to recall it. No use; it was a fruitless endeavor. Where

that name used to be in her mind there was now a blank space, empty and

echoless as the original void. It was _too_ ridiculous! Katherine gave a

little stamp of vexation. It was not the first time a name had popped out

of her mind at a critical moment. And sometimes--O horror! it didn't come

back again for days. Was there ever anything so utterly absurd as the

plight in which she now found herself? She knew Nyoda's name as well as

her own. M. M. It certainly began with an M.

After nearly an hour's exasperated wracking of her brains she gave it up

in disgust and stalked out of the station. Not for worlds would she have

confided to anyone her plight.

"People will think you're an escaped lunatic," she told herself in

terrified wrath. "They might put you in an asylum, and it would serve you

right if they did. You aren't fit to be out without a guardian. After

this you'll have to have your destination written out on a label tied to

your ankle, like a trunk."

She had one recollection to guide her. The house Nyoda lived in stood on

top of a hill. The name of Carver House and the address on Oak Street had

faded along with Nyoda's name. "I'll walk until I come to a house on the

top of a hill," she decided, "and find it that way. There can't be many

houses on hills in this town, it seems to be all in a valley. Come along,

Katherine, what you haven't got in your head you'll have to have in your

heels."

No one, seeing the tall, clever looking girl stepping briskly out of the

station and turning up Main Street with a businesslike tread, would have

guessed that she was a stranger in a strange town and hadn't any idea

where she was going. There was such an air of confidence and capability

about Katherine that people would have been more likely to ask her to

help them out of their difficulties than to suspect that she needed help

herself.

Certainly, Nyoda's house wouldn't be hard to find. Oakwood lay in a

valley, curled up among its sheltering hills like a kitten in a heap of

leaves. To be on a hill Nyoda must be on the outskirts of the town. She

inquired of a passing youngster what part of Oakwood was on a hill and

got the information that Main Street ran up hill at the end.

She set out blithely in the direction he pointed, enjoying the walk

through the crisp, icy air. A light fall of snow, white as swan's down,

covered the ground and the roofs, and sparkled in the light of the street

lamps in myriads of tiny twinkles. Not many people were abroad, for it

was the supper hour in Oakland. A Christmas stillness hovered over the

peaceful little town, as though it lay hushed and breathless in

anticipation of the coming of the Holy Babe. Low in the eastern sky

burned the brilliant evening star, bright as that other Star in the East

which guided the shepherds on that far-off Christmas night. Katherine

felt the spell of it and gradually her hasty steps became slower and at

times she stood still and looked upon the quiet scene with a feeling of

awe and reverence. "Why, it might be Bethlehem!" she said to herself.

"It's so still and white, and there's the star in the east, too!" Almost

unconsciously she began to repeat under her breath:

"O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie,

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by."

"Only it isn't quite true about the deep and dreamless sleep," she

qualified, her literal-mindedness getting the upper hand of her poetic

feeling, "because they're all inside eating supper." The thought of

supper made Katherine suddenly realize that she was ravenously hungry.

She had had nothing to eat since an early lunch on the train. "I hope I

get there before supper's over," she thought, and quickened her pace

again. Not that she wouldn't get something anyhow, she reflected, but

somehow the idea of coming in just as supper was ready, and sitting down

to a table covered with steaming dishes seized her fancy and warmed her

through with a pleasant glow of expectation.

"Nearly there!" she said to herself cheerfully. "Here's where Main Street

starts to go uphill." The houses had gradually become farther and farther

apart as she went on, until now she was walking along between wide, open

spaces, gleaming white in the starlight, with only an occasional low

cottage to break the landscape. The walk was steeply uphill now, and

looking back Katherine saw Oakwood curled in its sheltering valley, and

again she thought of a sleek, well fed kitten lying warm and comfortable

and drowsy, at peace with all the world.

"There aren't any poor people here, I guess," she thought to herself.

"All the houses look so prosperous. There probably aren't any hungry

children crying for bread. I'm the only hungry person in this whole town,

I believe. My, but I _am_ hungry! I could eat a whole house right now,

and a barn for dessert! Thank goodness, there's the top of the hill in

sight, and that must be Nyoda's house." A great dark bulk towered before

her at the top of the steep incline, its irregular outlines standing

sharply defined against the luminous sky. Katherine charged up the

remainder of the hill at top speed, slipping and falling in the icy path

several times in her eagerness, but finally landing intact, though

flushed and panting, upon its slippery summit, and stood still to behold

this wonderful house that Nyoda lived in, whose charms had been the theme

of many an enthusiastic letter from the Winnebagos during the previous

summer. It loomed large and silent before her, its frost covered window

panes shining whitely in the starlight with a faint, ghostly glimmer. No

gleam of light came from any of the doors or windows. The house was still

and dark as a tomb. Katherine stood wide-eyed with disappointment and

perplexity. Nyoda was not at home.

She clutched at a straw. Nyoda had gone to meet her and missed her; that

was it. But at the same time she felt a doubt rising in her mind which

rapidly grew into a certainty. This was not Nyoda's house before which

she stood on this lonely hilltop. It was some other house and it was

absolutely empty. Not only was it untenanted, but it had the look of a

house that has stood so for years. Even the soft, sparkling mantle of

snow that lay upon it could not hide the sagging porch, the broken steps,

the broken-down fence, the general air of decay which surrounded the

place.

Katherine emitted a cluck of chagrin. She was puffing like an engine from

her dash up the hill, she was tired out, she was ravenously hungry, she

was unutterably cross at herself. She scowled at the dark house with its

spectral, frosty windows, and made another frantic effort to recall

Nyoda's name, only to be confronted with that baffling blank where the

name once had been.

With a growing feeling of helplessness she stood on one foot in the snow

in the pose which she always assumed when thinking deeply, and considered

what she should do next. Should she keep on walking and climbing all the

hills until she finally came to the right one; should she go all the way

back to the station and sit there until the name came back to her, or

should she walk boldly up to one of the hospitable looking doors she had

passed, confide her plight and ask to be taken in for the night?

Katherine was trying to decide between the first two, leaving the third

as the extreme alternative in case she neither found the right hill nor

succeeded in remembering Nyoda's name before bedtime, when suddenly

something occurred which sent a chill of ice into her blood and left her

standing petrified in her one-legged pose, like a frozen stork. From the

dark and empty house before her came the sound of a song, ringing clear

and distinct through the frosty air. It was the voice of a woman, or a

girl. Beginning softly, the tone swelled out in volume till it seemed to

Katherine's ears to fill the whole house and to come pouring out of all

the doors and windows. Then it subsided until it came very faintly, like

the merest ghost of a song. Katherine felt the hair rising on her head;

she gave an odd little dry gasp. Wild terror assailed her and she would

have fled, but fear chained her limbs and she could not move hand or

foot. She stood riveted to the spot, staring fascinated at the dark,

untenanted house, which stared back at her with frost veiled, inscrutable

eyes; and all the while from somewhere in its mysterious depths came the

voice, now louder, now fainter, but always distinctly heard.

A sudden thought struck Katherine. Was she already a victim of

starvation, and was this the delirium which starving people went into?

They generally heard beautiful voices singing. No, that wasn't

possible--she couldn't be starving yet. She was tremendously hungry, but

there was still a fairly safe margin between her and the last stages.

Somehow the thought of hunger, and the idea of food, commonplace,

familiar victuals which it connoted, dissipated the supernatural

atmosphere of the place, and Katherine shook off her terror. The blood

stopped pounding in her ears; her heart began to beat naturally again;

her limbs lost their paralysis.

"Goose!" she said to herself scornfully. "Flying into a panic at the

sound of a voice singing and thinking it's ghosts! I'm ashamed of you,

Katherine Adams! Where's your 'spicuity? Vacant houses don't sing by

themselves. When empty houses start singing they aren't empty. Besides,

no ghost could sing like that. A voice like that means lungs, and ghosts

don't have lungs. Anybody that's got breath to sing can probably talk and

tell me where the next hill is. I'm going up and ask her."

She passed through an opening in the tumble-down fence, in which there

was no longer any gate, and went up the uneven, irregular brick walk and

up the broken steps, treading carefully upon each one and half expecting

them to go down under her weight. They creaked and trembled, but they

held her and she went on over the sagging porch to the door, which lay in

deep shadow at the one side. She felt about for a bell or knocker, and

then she discovered that the door stood open. She could hear the voice

plainly, singing somewhere in the house. Failing to find a doorbell she

rapped loudly with her knuckles on the door casing. To her nervous ears

the sound seemed to echo inside the house like thunder, but there was no

pause in the singing, no sound of footsteps coming to the door.

She rapped again. Still no sign from within. A sportive north wind,

racing up the hill, paused at the top to whirl about in a mad frolic, and

Katherine shivered from head to foot. She felt chilled through, and

fairly ached to get inside a house; anywhere to be in out of the cold.

She rapped a third time. Still the voice sang on as before, paying no

heed to the knock. Katherine grew desperate. Her teeth were chattering in

her head and her feet were going numb.

"Of course she can't hear me knock when she's singing," thought

Katherine. "The sound of her own voice fills her ears. I'm going in and

find her. I'll apologize for walking in on her so unceremoniously, but

it's the only thing to do. I've got to get in out of the cold pretty

soon."

Acting upon her resolution she stepped through the open door into the

hall inside and tried to fix the direction from which the voice was

coming. She looked in vain for a glimmer of light under a door to guide

her to the mysterious dweller in this strange establishment. The house

was apparently as dark on the inside as it looked from without. Katherine

opened her handbag and fumbled for her electric flash. In a moment a tiny

circle of light was boring valiantly into the gloom. By its gleam

Katherine saw that she stood in a long hall. Upon her left was a

succession of doors, all closed; upon her right a staircase curved upward

into the blackness above. Idly she turned her flashlight on the staircase

and noticed that the post was of beautifully carved mahogany. The polish

was gone, but it must have been handsome once, must have been--Katherine

gave a great start and nearly dropped her flashlight. Her eyes, traveling

up the mahogany stair rail, encountered those of a man who was leaning

over the banister half way up. His face, in the light of her flash, was

white as a sheet, and he seemed to be staring not so much at her as at

the door behind her, through which she at that moment discovered the

voice to be proceeding.

Katherine recovered from her surprise and remembered her manners. This

man must live here. She must explain quickly, or he would take her for a

burglar, coming in that way and looking around with a flashlight.

Katherine suddenly felt apprehensive. Suppose he wouldn't believe her

story? It was one thing to go into a house in search of a voice that

wouldn't come to the door; it was another thing to find a man inside.

She cleared her throat and wet her lips. "Excuse me for coming in like

this--" she began. She got no farther with her apologies. At the sound of

her voice the man gave a startled jump, backed away from the banister,

ran down the stairs two steps at a time and disappeared through the front

door, leaving Katherine standing in the empty hall, open-mouthed with

astonishment.