“It’s in the wall,” I suggested, pointing.  “P’r’aps it’s a mouse gnawing.”

“It’s more like a buffalo gnawing,” said Ed Mason.

“Sh-h-h-h-h-h!” said Mr. Daddles, “we ought to have looked about the house a little before we began to eat.  I think that’s only the branch of a tree, or something like that, scraping against the house outside.  Anyhow, we’d better investigate.”

He got up, and lighted one of the candles on the side-board.  Then he very carefully opened the other door of the dining-room, and we all followed him out into a hall.  There we listened again, but could hear nothing.  He led the way up the back-stairs, and we tip-toed behind him.  The candle which he carried flickered, and cast a dim light into two rooms which opened off the landing.  One was a nursery, with children’s blocks, stuffed elephants, and Noah’s Ark animals on the floor, and on a couch.  The moon, which had come out of the fog, shone in at a window, and its light fell right on a white rabbit sitting under a doll’s parasol.  He had tea-cups and saucers on the floor in front of him, but he was perfectly quiet.  The noise did not come from him.  The room on the other side of the landing was an ordinary bed-room, quite empty.

We stole along the landing toward the front of the house.  Here were two more large bed-rooms.  The beds were smooth and undisturbed, and both rooms were quiet as the grave.

“Nothing here,” whispered Mr. Daddles, “we’ll go down the front stairs.”

He spoke in the lowest kind of a whisper,—­I could hardly make out what he said.  But he beckoned toward the stairs, and we all tip-toed in that direction.  I can see how that hall looked,—­I can see it now, just as I saw it, as we came down stairs.  The wood-work was all painted white, some little moonlight came in through the glass over the front door, and that, with the candle, made it fairly clear.  The stairs were broad, and they sloped gradually.  There were two big portraits on the wall, one of them over the stairs.  Rooms opened to right and left of the front door, and in the corner of the hall, to the right, stood a big clock.  It ticked slowly and solemnly, and a little ship, above the dial, rocked back and forth on some painted waves.  I caught Mr. Daddles by the sleeve.

“The clock is going,” I whispered.

He nodded.  “Eight day clock,” he whispered back.

Then we continued down stairs, still walking without a sound.  Just as Mr. Daddles reached the foot of the stairs, the noise began again.  The long-drawn, sawing sound, and then the “yop, yop, yop” so loud that it nearly made us fall over backwards in surprise.  There was no possible doubt from what place it came.  It was from the room nearest the tall clock.