Pathfinder | Page 5

strongly to him, "they just couldn't hold out. Got cold feet after going through the experience and had to quit."
"But why?" demanded Landy.
"Because they declared the old mill was haunted!" replied Matty.
"Yes, suh, it was haunted," echoed Chatz.
The Southern boy had always confessed to a streak of superstition in his make-up. He admitted that he must have imbibed it from association with the ignorant little negro lads with whom he had been accustomed to play down on the plantation.
He had even admitted once to carrying in his pocket, as a charm, the left hind foot of a rabbit, which animal had been killed by himself in a graveyard when the moon was full.
The boys plagued Chatz so much that he had by degrees shown signs of considering most of his former beliefs as folly.
Still, the mere mention of a haunted house set his nerves to quivering. Chatz might be a timid fellow when up against anything bordering upon the ghostly, but on all other occasions he had proven himself brave, almost to the point of rashness.
It was "Doubting George" who burst out into a harsh laugh.
"A haunted house!" he exclaimed. "Ghosts! Strange knockings! Thrilling whispers! Ice-cold hands! Oh, my, what a lark! I've always wanted to get up against a thing like that. Don't believe in 'em the least bit. You could talk to me till you was gray-headed, and I'd just laugh. There never was such things as ghosts, never!"
Chatz looked at him rather queerly.
"Oh, well, perhaps you're right, George," he said, holding himself in check, "but I've read of some people who had pretty rough experiences."
"Rats! They fooled themselves every time," declared the boy who would not believe. "Bet you it was the wind whistling through a knot hole, or a parcel of rats squeaking and fighting between the walls. Ghosts! It makes me laugh."
"Same here," declared Red.
"Listen!" exclaimed Larry just then, making them all start. Through the timber ahead of them came the sweet clear notes of a bugle.
"Told you so, fellows," declared Matty, smiling; "that's Elmer. He's learning to use the bugle nearly as well as Mark himself."
"Then we're at the end of our trail following, are we?" asked Landy, not without a sigh of relief, for it had not been as easy work in his case as with his less stout comrades.
"Well, pretty near," Matty replied. "We've got to keep it up till we come in sight of the mill."
"But why?" asked George, who seemed to want to know every little thing, so that his natural tendency to object might have a chance to show itself.
"Oh, well, there might be one more opening for a message, and our main business is to translate these, you know."
"Do we stay long at the old mill?" asked Chatz.
Red gave him a quick, suspicious look.
"Aw, I reckon I know what's on our comrade's mind," he remarked, with a wink.
"As what?" demanded Landy.
"Chatz thinks he'd like to prowl around some, and see if that ghost has left any signs. 'Tain't often he's had a chance to meet up with a real haunted house, eh, Chatz?" and Red gave the Southern boy a sly dig in the ribs.
"Never had that pleasure in all my life, fellows, I assure you," replied the Southern boy, with ill-concealed delight in his manner.
"But say, no respectable ghost was ever known to walk except at midnight, and we don't intend camping out at the old mill, do we, just because of this silly talk?" asked George.
"Oh, the rest of us don't, but Chatz might take a notion to stay over," laughed Red. "When a fellow is set on investigating things he don't understand, and which were never meant for us to understand, there's just no telling how far he will carry the game."
Chatz gave him a lofty look.
"Thank you for the compliment, suh," he said.
They continued to follow the "spoor" of the two hounds, left so plainly for their guidance.
It was not long before another stick that held a bark "message" was discovered. And Landy felt immensely elated to think that by some chance he had been the first to see the "sign."
"I'll surprise you fellows yet, just mark me," he chuckled, while Matty was trying to read the queer little characters Elmer had marked upon the brown inner side of the fresh bark torn from a convenient tree close by.
"Wish you would, old top," remarked Red, with his customary enthusiasm.
"You'll get to like all these things more and more, the farther you go," said Larry.
"I feel that way already," was Landy's quick reply; "only I'm that clumsy and slow-witted I just don't see how I'm ever going to keep up with the procession."
"Elmer says it's only keeping everlastingly at it that makes a good scout," remarked Chatz.
Evidently, from the way these boys continually quoted "Elmer,"