"Well, by grabs! Gillie, where will you end?" laughed the other. "First love, now ghosts. Listening for spooks because we happen to be passing the burying spot of some of our ancestors. Allow me to alight and pick a switch for the poor boy to defend himself with when the ghosts set upon him."
"Sammie! Sammie! I hear it again! It's coming on the breeze. Listen now!"
Gilbert Allison stopped his horse and leaned eagerly forward. Sammie listened, but was again too late. The dead leaves rustled close by over the sunken graves; the tall, bare trees waved their skeleton arms, while the breeze died away to a long, weary sigh and was gone.
"It does not come from the cemetery, Sammie, but from beyond. Perhaps it will come again. Listen!"
The breeze was coming to them again, and they drew their horses to a halt.
"There, Sammie! You did not miss that, did you?"
They listened a moment longer, but the breeze was dying away and with it the cry, whatever it was.
"The Dickens! Allison, let us hurry on. This is too ghostly a night to tarry. That cry gives me an uneasy feeling to the marrow of my bones."
They quickened their pace, and rode some distance in silence. The sky seemed growing darker and the wind was rising. A thick clump of trees hard by cast a gloomy shadow across the road, and just as they passed into this the floating clouds covered the face of the moon, and they were in pitchy darkness.