boy I'd give you
somethin' to be askeered of! Now, Bud, nothin' kin happen to you. Ain't
I here?"

"But suppose they won't come when I tell 'em?"

"Yes, 'n' supposin' 'tain't tramps, but ghosts?" volunteered Mr. Porter,
edging away with his bicycle. It was now quite dark and menacing in
there where the cabin stood. As the outcome of half an hour's
discussion, the whole party advanced slowly upon the house, Anderson
Crow in the lead, his dark lantern in one hand, his cane in the other.
Half way to the house he stopped short and turned to Bud.

"Gosh dern you, Bud! I don't believe you heerd any noise in there at
all! There ain't no use goin' any further with this, gentlemen. The dern
boys was lyin'. We might jest as well go home." And he would have
started for home had not Isaac Porter uttered a fearful groan and
staggered back against a swamp reed for support, his horrified eyes
glued upon a window in the log house. The reed was inadequate, and Isaac
tumbled over backward.

For a full minute the company stared dumbly at the indistinct little
window, paralysis attacking every sense but that of sight. At the
expiration of another minute the place was deserted, and Anderson Crow
was the first to reach the bicycles far up the river bank. Every face
was as white as chalk, and every voice trembled. Mr. Crow's dignity
asserted itself just as the valiant posse prepared to "straddle" the
wheels in mad flight.

"Hold on!" he panted. "I lost my dark lantern down there. Go back an'
git it, Bud."

"Land o' mighty! Did y'ever see anythin' like it?" gasped Jim Borum,
trying to mount a ten-year-old boy's wheel instead of his own.

"I'd like to have anybody tell me there ain't no sech things as ghosts,"
faltered Uncle Jimmy Borton, who had always said there wasn't. "Let go,
there! Ouch!" The command and subsequent exclamation were the inevitable
results of his unsuccessful attempt to mount with Elon Jones the same
wheel.

"What'd I tell you, Anderson?" exclaimed Isaac Porter. "Didn't I say it
was ghosts? Tramps nothin'! A tramp wouldn't last a second up in that
house. It's been ha'nted fer thirty years an' it gits worse all the
time. What air we goin' to do next?"

Even the valiant Mr. Crow approved of an immediate return to Tinkletown,
and the posse was trying to disentangle its collection of bicycles when
an interruption came from an unsuspected quarter--a deep, masculine
voice arose from the ice-covered river hard by, alm