"You see your train was that late," said he.

"But she's got the key," said Mother. "What are we to do?"

"Oh, she'll have left that under the doorstep," said the cart man;
"folks do hereabouts." He took the lantern off his cart and
stooped.

"Ay, here it is, right enough," he said.

He unlocked the door and went in and set his lantern on the table.

"Got e'er a candle?" said he.

"I don't know where anything is." Mother spoke rather less
cheerfully than usual.

He struck a match. There was a candle on the table, and he lighted
it. By its thin little glimmer the children saw a large bare
kitchen with a stone floor. There were no curtains, no hearth-rug.
The kitchen table from home stood in the middle of the room. The
chairs were in one corner, and the pots, pans, brooms, and crockery
in another. There was no fire, and the black grate showed cold,
dead ashes.

As the cart man turned to go out after he had brought in the boxes,
there was a rustling, scampering sound that seemed to come from
inside the walls of the house.