"Oh, let them hoot!" he said. "I am going to stay here and have a fire,
if I can find anything to burn."
While poking about at the far end of the room for more boards to break
up, he found a battered old wardrobe with double doors and called to me
to help him drag it in front of the oven.
"Going to smash that?" I asked.
"No, going to sleep in it," said he. "We'll set it up slantwise before
the fire, open the doors and lie down in it. I've a notion that it will
keep us warm, even if it isn't very soft."
The wardrobe was about four feet wide, and, after propping up the top
end at an easy slant, we lay down in it, and took turns getting up to
replenish the blaze in the oven. It was not wholly uncomfortable; but
any sense of ease that I had begun to feel was banished by a suspicion
that Addison now confided to me.
"I don't certainly know what place this is," he said, "but I'm beginning
to think that it must be the old Jim Cronin farm. I've heard that it's
over in this vicinity, away off in the woods by itself. If that's so,"
Addison went on, "nobody has lived here for eight or nine years. Cronin,
you know, kept his wife shut up down cellar for a year or two, because
she tried to run away from him.
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