“I go you, Nat,” he said, presently; “the scheme is worth trying out. Of course, if any fellow chooses to stand back and miss the fun, he’s at liberty to do it; but I’ll borrow one of your old sheets; and I’ll do my level best to throw my voice so as to make it sound like it came up from the grave.”
“Then we’re all in on the game, if you say so, Dick,” declared Andy Hale.
“Ditto here!” echoed Elmer, feeling that the die was now cast; and no one had ever called him a quitter.
“How about you, Leslie?” asked Nat, sneeringly, for he had noticed that the other seemed uneasy when the great scheme was first broached.
“Who, me?” replied the Capes boy, scornfully. “Did any one ever know me to back down when my chums were in for a lark? I speak for another of the sheets, Nat.”
“There, the clock struck the half hour,” interrupted Dick, “and if we want to be on deck at exactly midnight, we’d better get a hustle on.”
“Come along fellows, we’ll chase out along the road here to the Brandon place, and climb the fence there. Say, I prowled around today and got my bearings all right.”
It was not a great distance to the vacant Brandon place, and the seven mischief-loving boys scrambled over the old fence with the greatest of ease. Nat did not seem really to need any lantern to show him the way, so well had he stamped the lay of the grounds on his memory.
Arriving at the dividing fence he showed the others where he had taken pains to pull off some boards, allowing a free passage to the adjoining grounds of the rich old storekeeper, who seemed to have such a poor opinion of all boys after his complete failure to bring his own son up by strict methods.
“Look there, I can see lights in his house!” whispered Elmer.