ait, I'm coming!_"

It sounded farther and farther off until it was drowned in the distant
moaning.

"_It's he,_" Warde whispered, his voice tense.

"I know where it is; come on," said Roy.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BANSHEE

"What does it mean, anyway?" Warde asked, as he followed Roy,
breathless and in suspense. "What are we going to do? Has he got
some--some--accomplice--"

"Follow me," was all that Roy said.

"The troop--if we're in danger--"

"Never mind the troop; follow me."

Silently Roy sped along into an overgrown cross street, cutting through
the doorless wreck of the Y. M. C. A. shack, over the litter within, and
out on the opposite side. A tall, spectral shadow soon confronted them,
whence emanated that ghostly voice, loud and beseeching, as they
approached. Their nearness to it dispelled any thought of its being the
inanimate sounds of wind-stirred wreckage or of some unknown living
creature. It moaned and cried like no voice they had ever heard before.
Yet it was strangely human. The crying of that fleeing, bewildered
apparition was silent now, and there seemed a note of gloomy solace in
the low, plaintive strain.

"Come ahead," said Roy resolutely, "follow me. Not scared, are you?"

He ascended the narrow, metal ladder of the windmill, Warde following.
Upon the top was a tiny platform, and here he turned on his flashlight.
Crouched in a heap was their friend Blythe. He was in a state of frantic
agitation, his whole form trembling like a leaf. His head was bowed; he
clutched something in his two hands. From it dangled a cord. Several
burned matches lay near him and wisps and little masses of woven straw
littered the miniature aerial platform.

Roy turned his light above to that part of the superstructure which
revolved with the wind, enabling the winged wheel to keep in favorable
position for revolving. The moaning voice was very near now, within
arm's reach almost, and at that close range was divested of its ghostly
suggestiveness.

"Look," Roy whispered, directing his light upward. There upon the
movable framework was something that looked like a cigar-box. It was so
placed as always to catch the breeze from the revolving fan.

"I know what it is," said Roy; "hold this light while I take it down."

He seemed to know that there was no peace for that distracted, crouching
figure, as long as the weird voice from that compact little mechanism
was audible. He stood upon the framework and