But instead of coming in to me,
I heard her step up the ladder--up to the attic--to Glahn's hole up
there. I heard it only too well. I threw my door open wide, but Maggie
had gone up already. That was ten o'clock.
I went in, sat down in my room, and took my gun and loaded it. At twelve
o'clock I went up the ladder and listened at Glahn's door. I could hear
Maggie in there; I went down again. At one I went up again; all was
quiet this time. I waited outside the door. Three o'clock, four o'clock,
five. Good, I thought to myself. But a little after, I heard a noise and
movement below in the hut, in my landlady's room; and I had to go down
again quickly, so as not to let her find me there. I might have
listened much more, but I had to go.
In the passage I said to myself: "See, here she went: she must have
touched my door with her arm as she passed, but she did not open the
door: she went up the ladder, and here is the ladder itself--those four
steps, she has trodden them."
My bed still lay untouched, and I did not lie down now, but sat by the
window, fingering my rifle now and again. My heart was not beating--it
was trembling.
Half an hour later I heard Maggie's footstep on the ladder again. I lay
close up to the window and saw her walk out of the hut.
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