"You are either a very brave boy or a very foolish one," said Hinter. "Will you tell me what prompted you to dare what no other person in the Settlement would dare! Was it simply curiosity?"
"I guess maybe it was," Billy confessed. "Anyways I've got all I want of it. It'll be a long time afore you see me there ag'in."
Hinter's sigh of relief was inaudible to the boy. "That's a good resolve," he commended. "Stick to it; that swamp is a treacherous place."
"It's awful," said Billy in awed tones. "I got as far as the first pond. It was far enough for me."
"You got as far as the pond!" Hinter cried in wonder. The eyes turned on Billy's face were searching. "And you found only a long shallow of stagnant, stinking water, I'll be bound," he laughed, uneasily.
"I found—" Billy commenced, his mind flashing back to the bubbling geysers of the pond—then chancing to catch the expression in Hinter's face he finished, "jest what you said, a big pond of stinkin' dead water, crawlin' with all kinds of blood-suckers an' things."
He leaped from the fence. "Good bye," he called back over his shoulder. "I hear old Cherry bawlin' fer her drink."
Hinter was still seated on the fence when Billy turned the curve in the road. "I wonder what he wants of Lost Man's Swamp," mused the boy. "An' I wonder what he's scared somebody'll find there?"