"I've tried everything," replied the man gruffly.
"What makes them so bold?"
"The place was overrun with them when I came on it four years ago. I can't keep anything in the barn. Why, they have eaten a good buggy harness on me! I have to keep my harnesses in my bedroom. I've got an alarm clock in there and it ticks so loud that it scares them off, I guess. And, then, I snore. That must keep the creatures on the move."
Hiram did not know whether the man was all together in earnest, or not; but he had to laugh at this last statement.
"It ain't no laughing matter," Yancey Battick said, wagging his head. "My old horse got a nail in his hoof and I greased it well. Hanged if the rascals didn't near eat him up in one night. If he hadn't kicked and snorted so and woke me up, I guess they would have had the most of him eaten before morning."
"But what brings them into the house—and so bold? You must be on the watch for them continually."
"I am. Jase Oakley is right. I am afraid of the things. I scarcely dare leave the house because of them—"
He halted. Hiram knew instinctively that the man thought he had said too much. He had verged on some secret, the mystery of which the youth had felt to be in the very air of the house since he had entered it. He saw that Battick was eyeing him again in his suspicious, if not ugly, way, so he hastily asked:
"Did you learn to shoot on the fly like that by shooting rats?"
"Oh, I knew how to use a gun before I came to Pringleton."