friendly with every strange
animal you see, Ruth Fielding. A pole-cat!"

"Wish I had a gun!" exclaimed Curly. "I'd shoot that skunk."

"Glad you didn't then," said Ruth, promptly. "Poor little thing."

"Ya-as," drawled the boy. "'Poor little thing.' It was just aiming for
somebody's hencoop. One of 'em 'll eat chickens faster than Gran's hens
can hatch 'em out."

Pushing on through the woods at this slow pace brought them to the ruined
grist mill and the old dam not before ten o'clock. There was a pale and
watery moon, the shine of which glistened on the falling water over the
old logs of the dam, but gave the searchers little light. The moon's rays
merely aided in making the surroundings of the mill more ghostly.

Nobody lived within a mile of the mill site, Curly assured the girls, and
if Amy had found this place it was not likely that she had likewise found
the nearest human habitation, for that was beyond the mill and directly
opposite to Briarwood and the town of Lumberton.

They shouted for Amy, and then searched the ghostly premises of the ruined
mill. Years before the roof had been burned away and some of the walls
fallen in. Owls made their nests in the upper part of the building, as the
party found, much to the girls' excitement when a huge, spread-winged
creature dived out of a window and went "whish! whish! whish!" off through
the long grass, to hunt for mice or other small, night-prowling creatures.

"Goodness! that owl is as big as a turkey!" gasped Ruth, clinging to Ann
in her fright.

"Bigger," announced Curly. "Old Scratch! I'd like to shoot him and have
him stuffed."

"I'd rather have some of the turkey stuffing," chuckled Ann Hicks. "Owl
would be rather tough, I reckon."

"Oh, not to eat!" scoffed Curly. "I'd put him in Gran's parlor. And that
reminds me of an owl story----"

"Don't tell us any old stories; tell us new ones, if you must tell any,"
Ann interrupted.

"How do you know whether this is old or young till I've told it?" demanded
Curly, as they all three sat on the ruined doorstep of the mill to rest.

"Quite right, Curly," sighed Ruth. "Go ahead. Make us laugh. I feel like
crying."

"Then you can cry over it," retorted the boy. "There was a butcher who had
a stuffed owl in his shop and an old Irishman came in and asked him: 'How
mooch for the broad-faced bur-r-rd?'

"'It's an owl,' said the butcher.

"The old man repeated his question--'how mooch for the broad-faced
bur-