"Oh! it's you, sir, is it?" he exclaimed, and there was a positive vein of relief in the tones of his quivering voice that Elmer could not but notice.
"Why, who else did you think it could be, Beaver, Number Four?" asked the assistant scout master, quickly.
"Oh! I don't know," came the rather hesitating reply. "You see I guess Chatz Maxfield has got me all worked up with his silly notions, because I'm seeing things, just like he does, right along. I'm ashamed of myself, that's what."
"Do you mean just now you saw something?" asked Elmer.
"Well," replied Jasper, rising to his feet as he spoke, with returning confidence, "I thought I did, for a fact; and I just hid my head to shut it out, but of course it was only what Mr. Garrabrant calls an optical illusion. There just couldn't be anything there."
"Of course not," the other went on, encouragingly. "H'm, what was it, by the way, you thought you saw, Number Four?"
"That's the silly part of it, sir," Jasper answered. "It wasn't anything that I could recognize at all, which proves that I was only imagining things. Plague take Chatz and his ghosts! I never was very brave at my best, but thinking of him has just about queered me. I'm glad you came to talk to me, and show me how foolish it is to let such notions take root."
"But, by the way, where was it you thought you saw this wonderful thing which you say bore no shape that you could describe?" Elmer insisted.
"Oh! let me see, I was sitting just this way, and looking straight out yonder. It was in that open place, sir. I guess the fire must have flashed up suddenly, and dazzled me a bit."
But Elmer noticed that the second sentry pointed in exactly the same quarter where Chatz insisted he had set eyes on the ghost! This would seem to indicate that there must be something in the story.