I called again. Then she came to the door, but did not unlock it.
'What is it?' she asked. 'O,' said I, 'I thought I heard talking here
and I was frightened,' 'It must have been next door,' said she. I
begged pardon and went back to my room. There was no more noise, but
when in the morning we broke into her room and found her gone, the
window open and signs of distress and struggle around, I knew I had
not been mistaken; that there were men with her when I went to her
door, and that they had carried her off--"

This time I could not restrain myself.

"Did they drop her out of the window?" I inquired.

"O," said she, "we are building an extension, and there is a ladder
running up to the third floor, and it was by means of that they took
her."

"Indeed! she seems at least to have been a willing victim," I
remarked.

The woman clutched my arm with a grip like iron. "Don't you believe
it," gasped she, stopping me in the street where we were. "I tell you
if what I say is true, and these burglars or whatever they were, did
carry her off, it was an agony to her, an awful, awful thing that will
kill her if it has not done so already. You don't know what you are
talking about, you never saw her--"

"Was she pretty," I asked, hurrying the woman along, for more than one
passer-by had turned their heads to look at us. The question seemed
in some way to give her a shock.