No answer came and Dick's heart sank within him like a plummet in a pool.
He went to the edge of the walk, gathered up some gravel and threw it
against a window in his mother's room on the second floor. That would
arouse her, because he knew that she slept lightly in these times,
when her son was off to the wars. But the window was not raised, and he
could hear no sound of movement in the room.
Alarmed, he went back to the front door, and he noticed that while the
door was locked the keyhole was empty. Then his mother was gone away.
The sign was almost infallible. Had any one been at home the key would
have been on the inside.
His heart grew lighter. There had been no violence. No roving band had
come there to plunder. He whistled and shouted through the keyhole,
although he did not want anyone who might possibly be passing in the road
to hear him, as this town was almost wholly Southern in its sympathies.
There was still no answer, and leading his horse behind one of the pine
trees on the lawn, where it would not be observed, he went to the rear
of the house, and taking a stick pried open a kitchen window.
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