She set the bowls down on the little table beside the bed, placed the lamp beside them, then leaning over tucked the blankets about the boys.
"No use tryin' to wake Maurice," she said as she turned to go. "As well try to wake the dead. Remember, you boys get up when I call you."
CHAPTER IX
MOVING THE MENAGERIE
Billy and Maurice, taking the short cut to the Wilson farm across the rain-drenched fields next morning, were planning the day's programme.
"Now that we've got ol' Harry's charm along with my rabbit-foot," Billy was saying, "we ought'a be able to snoop 'round in the ha'nted grove an' even hunt through the house any time we take the notion. Maybe we'll get a chance to do it to-day."
"But, darn it all, Bill," Maurice objected, "there won't be no ghost to lead the way to the stuff in the daytime."
"Well, if we take a look over the place in daylight we'll know the lay-out better at night, won't we? Trigger Finger Tim did that most times, an' he always got away clean. Supposin' a ghost is close at your heels, ain't it a good idea to have one or two good runways picked out to skip on? We're goin' through that ha'nted house in daylight, so you might as well make up your mind to that."
Maurice was about to protest further when the rattle of loose spokes and the beat of a horse's hoofs on the hard road fell on their ears.
"That's Deacon Ringold's buck-board," Billy informed his chum, drawing him behind an alder-screened stump. "Say, ain't he drivin'? Somebody must be sick at his place." Then as the complaining vehicle swept into sight from around the curve, "By crackey, Maurice, your Pa's ridin' with him."