"The ould sinner wants to marry me. Think av thot! She's been hoidin' me frum the officers fer matrimoonial poorpuses. Take me away from her, Frankie, darlint! Oi've kilt a thramp, and I'm in peril av bein' hoong for it; but I'd rather be hoong than to marry such a cat as thot! Bad cess to her!"
"Gentlemen, the poor fellow is out of his head!" the woman purred, modulating that shrieking voice. "His head has been hurt, and he don't know nothin' that he's talkin' 'bout."
Barney clung to Merriwell and Hodge as if he feared the woman would drag him bodily away from these friends.
"Oi suppose thot she may be able to foorce me into marryin' her," he moaned. "Oi kilt a thramp, and Oi wor hidin' frum the officers—may the divil floy away wid thim—and Oi sneaked intil her house, d'ye moind, and hid me loike a fool under her bed. The crayther had been lookin' under thot bed for forty years to foind a man! And whin she let her ould oyes loight on me, she pulled me out av there; an' she's been kapin' me and scarin' me intil fits and hoidin' me from the officers iver since—and, bad cess to her, nixt wake she wor goin' to marry me."
"Why did you sneak round the hotel and along the paths in that queer way?" Frank asked, after the vinegary-visaged and matrimonially inclined female had departed in despair and disgust, and he had Barney alone. "That still puzzles me. We heard that you had been killed by those tramps, and you looked and acted enough like a ghost to be one!"
"A ghost, is it?" said Barney, glancing about as if he did not like even the thought. "Thot ould witch wor kapin' me hid away from the officers in thot wee bit av a house roight behind the three over there, and all the ixercoise Oi could git wor whin Oi could shlip out av noights and walk round and swally a brith av fresh air. Oi t'ought Oi had kilt the thramp and thot the officers wor watchin' for me! Thot ould divil hilped me to believe thot hersilf! So whin Oi heard yez call, av coorse Oi worn't goin' to sthop and be arristed. A ghost, is it? Oi'm thinkin' thot yez'd be crapin' round, too, if yez t'ought thot a rope wor riddy to toighten about the neck av yez!"
"Haw! haw! haw!"
The roars did not proceed from Joe Gamp, but from the landlord of the hotel. Now that Barney was found to be real flesh and blood, and not a spirit, the landlord had entered more heartily into the search for the mysterious source of the strange footsteps. He had been willing that the doors opening into the corridors should be closed—for only when the corridor was darkened could the ghostly sounds be heard.
As soon as the "footsteps" came again he threw open the door and chucklingly led the way out through a side room into a shedlike structure that came up against the corridor wall.