barking not the yaps in which it had been occasionally indulging, but a sustained volley of full-lunged, open-mouthed, frenzied barking.
Something, I told myself, had happened to excite that dog.
I listened to learn if I could discover any reason. Presently, while the dog still barked, there was a knocking, as I judged, at the front door; not one modest knock, but a peal of loud, insistent assaults with the knocker. I got up from where I was sitting and groped my way to the cellar door.
“Who’s that?” I asked myself, as I stood with my face close to the woodwork.
“That sounds as if someone were in a hurry to get in who does not mean to be denied.”
Crash! crash! crash! came the knocker. Then a tearing noise which at first I could not understand; then footsteps were heard.
“They’ve forc
