"I'm glad you did. Can you hear it now?"

They were out in the hall, and could see the light that was kept aglow in the bath room. Cora switched off her electric.

"I don't hear it," affirmed Belle. "The noise has stopped."

It had, that was certain. The silence of the night outside was broken only by the distant roar of the waterfall, a sound with which by this time the girls had become so familiar that they did not notice it unless they listened especially for it, as the receiver of a wireless message must be tuned to catch the wave impulses of a certain length.

"I can't hear it," said Cora, breathing softly, as Belle was doing.

There was no more noise.

"Could it have been distant thunder?" asked Cora, when a minute pa.s.sed in silence-and a long minute it seemed to the waiting ones.

Belle stepped to the window and looked out and up at the sky.

"The stars are shining," she said. "If there is a storm it is a distant one, and one that far off wouldn't sound so near. I don't believe it was thunder."

Whatever it was, the sound was not repeated. Together Cora and Belle got a drink in the bath room, and brought one to Bess. Cora called softly to her, but the plump twin had gone to sleep again, without waiting for the water. Cora set it in a chair by the bed and came out of the room as softly as she had gone in.

"No use letting her know about it," she remarked to Belle. "And we won't tell anything in the morning, until we hear what the others have to say."

"All right," agreed Belle. "I'll lie with you a while."

"Yes," a.s.sented Cora. She understood Belle's feelings.

The two girls talked in whispers, straining their ears for a repet.i.tion of the strange noise, but none came, and finally Belle, who was fighting off sleep, announced that she was going to her own room.

Cora and Belle looked significantly at one another across the breakfast table, and Bess remarked:

"Did you hear me knock it over?"

"Knock what over?" asked Cora, wonderingly.

"The gla.s.s of water in the chair by my bed. I didn't know it was there, and just before daylight I awoke, and as I put my arm out of bed I knocked the gla.s.s to the floor. I thought sure you must have heard it."

"No," Cora replied. "Did you break it?"

Bess shook her head.

"It fell on the rug, but the water splashed in my ties. I'll have to wear my high shoes until the others dry. Why didn't you tell me the water was there?"

"You were asleep when I brought it in," Cora said, "and I felt it was a pity to disturb you."

"What were you prowling around for?" asked Hazel.

"Oh, just for fun," Cora said, with another warning look at Belle.

"They didn't hear anything," the latter said to Cora when they were alone a little later.

"No, and Mrs. Floyd or her husband didn't either, for they didn't say anything."

"Unless they heard it and don't want to tell us."

"Why shouldn't they tell us?" Cora asked.

"Oh, they might think we'd go away if the queer things begin happening."

"It wasn't so very queer-just a noise," declared Cora.

"Was it just a noise?" asked Belle, suspiciously.

"I don't know-was it-or-wasn't it?" Cora questioned.

"I guess we'll have to let it go that way," Belle decided. "Here come the boys. Shall we tell them?"

"No-that is, not directly. I'll see if I can't find out in an indirect way."

"All right, I'll leave it to you."

After some general talk when the boys had come in, Cora brought the subject around to the waterfall.

"Have you boys gotten used to the noise of it yet?" she asked. "You're nearer to it than we are. Does it keep you awake now?"

"Can't anything keep me awake," yawned Jack. "I don't get half enough sleep as it is."

"You certainly slept soundly last night," said Walter.

"How do you know? Did you stay awake to find out?"

"No, but I heard it thundering, and I called to you that you'd better put your window down, for your room faces the west and most storms come from there this time of the year. You didn't answer so I concluded you must have been sleeping."

"I was," declared Jack. "Thunder, eh? I didn't hear it."

"It was only a rumble," Walter said. "I didn't stay awake longer myself than to hear that."

"They heard it, too," said Belle, when she and Cora had walked off by themselves.

"Yes," agreed her chum. "But was it thunder?"

"We're right back where we started," laughed Belle, "arguing in a circle. Let's forget it."

CHAPTER XV-A NARROW ESCAPE

But though Cora and Belle agreed to drop the matter of the unexplained noise, they could not dismiss it from their minds. Several times that day Cora would notice Belle in a brown study, and on taxing her with it would be met with the statement: