"Leg nuthin'!" Billy removed his hand from his trousers-pocket and waved something before two pairs of fear-widened eyes.
"'No ghost kin harm where lies this charm,'" he recited solemnly. "Now if you fellers feel like beatin' it, why beat it; but so long as I'm grabbin' onto this left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit I don't run away from no ghost—not even old man Scroggie's."
"That's all right fer you, Bill," returned Walter, "but what's goin' t' happen t' Maurice an' me, supposin' that ghost takes a notion to gallop this way? That's what I want'a know!"
Billy turned upon him. "Say, Fatty, haven't I told you that this here charm protects everybody with me?" he asked cuttingly.
"There's never been a ghost that ever roamed nights been able to get near it. You kin ask Tom Dodge er any of the other Injuns if there has."
"Oh it might lay an Injun ghost," said the unreasonable Fatty, "but how about a white man's? How about old man Scroggie's, fer instance? You know yourself, Bill, old man Scroggie was a tartar. Nobody ever fooled him while he was alive an' nobody need try now he's dead. If he wants to come back here an' snoop round lookin' fer the money he buried an' forgot where, it's his own funeral. I'm fer not mixin' up in this thing any—"
"Keep still!" cautioned Billy, "an' look yonder! See it?"
He pointed through the trees to an open glade in the grove. The full moon, riding high in the sky, threw her light fair upon the fern-sown sod; across the glade a white object was moving—drifting straight toward the watchers. Billy, tightly gripping his rabbit's foot charm in one sweaty hand and a rough-barked sapling in the other, felt Walter's hands clutching his shoulders.
"Oh Jerusalem!" groaned the terrified Fatty, "It's the ghost! Look, it's sheddin' blue grave-mist! Fer the love of Mike let's git out'a this!"
"Wait," gulped Billy, but it was plain to be seen he was wavering. His feet were getting uneasy, his toes fairly biting holes through his socks in their eagerness to tear up the sward. But as leader it would never do for him to show the white feather.