"It is quite understandable, dear," Jessie said, with more composure than her chum could display at the moment. "So you came over here----"

"To pick strawberries. Got a pail half full down there somewhere. The thunder scared me. Then I saw youse two up here and I thought you was the Carter ha'nt sure enough."

"Let's have some lunch," cried Amy quickly.

She got up and began to bustle about. She opened the two boxes they had brought and set the vacuum bottle of hot cocoa on the bench. There were two cups and she insisted upon giving one of them to Henrietta.

"I don't believe I could drink a drop or eat a morsel," she said to Jessie, when the latter remonstrated. "I feel as if I was in the famine section of Armenia or Russia or China. That poor little thing!"

She insisted upon giving Henrietta the bulk of her own lunch and all the tidbits she could find in Jessie's lunchbox. The freckle-faced girl began systematically to fill up the hollow with which she was accredited. It was evident that the good food made Henrietta quite forget the so-called ha'nts.

The rain continued to fall torrentially; the thunder muttered almost continually, but in the distance; again and again the lightning flashed.

Jessie Norwood fed the fire on the hearth until the warmth of it could be felt to the farther end of the big old kitchen. She and Henrietta were fast becoming dried, and their outer clothing could soon be put on again.

"I wonder if Momsy was scared when the storm broke," ruminated Jessie.

"She thinks the aerial may attract lightning."

"Nothing like that," declared Amy cheerfully. "But I wish we had a radio sending set here and could talk to her----"

"Ow! What's that?"

Even Henrietta stopped eating, looked upward at the dusty ceiling, and listened for a repet.i.tion of the sound. It came in a moment--a sudden thump--then the thrashing about of something on the bare boards of the floor of the loft over the kitchen.

"O-oh!" squealed Amy, jumping up from the table.

"What _can_ it be?" demanded Jessie Norwood, and her face expressed fear likewise.

Henrietta took another enormous bite of sandwich; from behind that barrier she said in a m.u.f.fled tone:

"Guess it's the Carter ha'nt after all!"

HENRIETTA IS VALIANT

THE PRIZE IDEA

CHAPTER IX

HENRIETTA IS VALIANT

Jessie Norwood tried to remember that she should set little Henrietta a good example. She should not show panic because of the mysterious noise in the loft of the abandoned Carter house.

But as the thrashing sounds continued and finally the cause of it came tumbling down the enclosed stairway and b.u.mped against the door that opened from the kitchen upon that stairway, Jessie screamed almost as loud as Amy.

Amy Drew, however, ran out into the rain. Neither Jessie nor the little freckle-faced girl were garbed properly for an appearance in the open; not even in as lonely a place as the clearing about the old Carter house. To tell the truth, Henrietta kept on eating and did not at first get up from the table.

"Aren't you scared, child?" demanded Jessie, in surprise.

"Course I am," agreed the little girl. "But ha'nts chase you anywhere.

They can go right through keyholes and doors----"

"Mercy! Whatever it is seems determined to come through that door."

"There ain't no keyhole to it," said Henrietta complacently.

The banging continued at the foot of the stairs. Amy was shrieking for her chum to come out of the house. But Jessie began to be ashamed of her momentary panic.

"I'm going to see what it is," she declared, approaching the door.

"Maybe you won't see nothing," said Henrietta. "Mrs. Foley says that ha'nts is sometimes just wind. You don't see nothing. Only you feel creepy and cold fingers touch you and a chilly breath hits the back o'

your neck."

"I declare!" exclaimed Jessie. "That Mrs. Foley ought not to tell you such things."

She looked about for some weapon, for the sounds behind the door panels seemed to suggest something very material. There was a long hardwood stick standing in the corner. It might have been a mop handle or something of the kind. Jessie seized it, and with more courage again walked toward the door.

Bang, bang, thump! the noise was repeated. She stretched a tentative hand toward the latch. Should she lift it? Was there something supernatural on the stairway?

She saw the door tremble from the blows delivered upon it. There was nothing spiritual about that.

"Whatever it is----"

To punctuate her observation Jessie Norwood lifted the iron latch and jerked open the door. It was dusky in the stairway and she could not see a thing. But almost instantly there tumbled out upon the kitchen floor something that brought shriek after shriek from Jessie's lips.

"Hi!" cried Henrietta. "Did it bite you?"

Jessie did not stop to answer. She seized her skirt drying before the fire and wrapped it around her bare shoulders as she ran through the outer door. She left behind her writhing all over the kitchen floor a pair of big blacksnakes.

The fighting snakes hissed and thumped about, wound about each other like a braided rope. Probably the warmth of the fire pa.s.sing up the chimney had stirred the snakes up, and it was evident that they were in no pleasant frame of mind.

"What is it? Ghosts?" cried Amy Drew, standing in the rain.

"It's worse! It's snakes!" Jessie declared, looking fearfully behind her, and in at the door.

She had dropped the stick with which she had so valiantly faced the unknown. But when that unknown had become known--and Jessie had always been very much afraid of serpents--all the girl's valor seemed to have evaporated.

"Mercy!" gasped Amy. "What's going on in there? Hear that thumping, will you?"

"They are fighting, I guess," replied her chum.

"Where's Hen?"