"Let's forget about that little affair," suggested Elmer; "no use crying over spilt milk, and what's done can't be undone. Toby, suppose you tell us a little more about this nut grove up at the old Cartaret place; because if I remember rightly you said you'd been asking everybody all about the estate."
"Why, old Judge Cartaret, the rich man who built up the place, meaning to live there with his young and handsome wife, went crazy, they say, after he'd found her dead in her room. The mystery never was cleared up. To this day some people say she was murdered by a man she once promised to marry before the millionaire judge came along; another lot seem to believe she committed suicide because the judge was so cruel, and wouldn't let her leave the place; and one man told me he always had believed ever since he was a boy that the judge struck her down in a fit of passion. But of course those things don't cut any figure with us."
"On the contrary," interrupted Chatz, who had been listening to all these horrors with wide-open eyes, and a look of intense interest on his dark face, "they strike me as being decidedly interesting, suh. If I had a chance I'd like to investigate this queer thing, and perhaps learn what did happen in that big house ever so many years ago."
"But how about the nut treeth, Toby, did the judge plant the thame when he wath trying to make a thut-in paradith for that pretty bride of hith?"
"That's just what he did, boys, so they told me," Toby continued, readily consenting to be squeezed for information; "he planted a whole lot of chestnuts, walnuts and shell-bark hickories that have been growing for several dozen years. They're busting big trees, and just breaking down with the finest crop ever known, and with never a single fellow brave enough up to this time to go there and gather the harvest. Why, when I heard what that man had to say about it, I was fairly wild to be off. And believe me, boys, we'll make the eyes of the other fellows stick out of their heads like fun when they see what an enormous supply of nuts we've gathered for next winter around the fire. Yum! yum! I always did say that a plate of red-cheeked apples, a dish of fresh popped corn, and a pocketful of nuts beats all creation on a stormy night, winter times."
"Believe it when I see it!" muttered skeptical George, who undoubtedly thought this wonderful harvest was too good to turn out to be true; after they had arrived on the ground, very probably it would only be to find that the trees had been stripped of their burden of nuts by some hardy souls who did not place much credence in the stories of the ghost said to haunt the place; something was always on the eve of turning up to keep George from reaping success, it seemed.
"No use talking," observed the disgusted Toby, "George never will be convinced till he begins to load up the wagon with bags running over with nuts. And even then he'll expect some white-sheeted ghost to step up, and demand that we throw every one of the same back again where we found them. You couldn't convince him of a single thing till he's had a chance to prove it over and over again."
"Learned that in school when I was doin' problems," George declared with one of his most exasperating grins; "which was why I always passed with such a high percentage in arithmetic and algebra. They said I'd make a fine carpenter, because I'd always measure my boards again and again before I cut 'em, and that way there never'd be any mistakes about my sawing."
"And a great carpenter you'd make, George," chuckled Toby; "why, you'd take everlasting and a day just to get your foundation started. The folks would all die off waiting for you to finish your job. A carpenter—whew! excuse me if you please from ever employing a mechanic who spends all his time figgering out how things could be so and so."
"But we must be within a mile or two of the place by now, fellows," Elmer told them about that time, "so if you hold up a little we'll soon know the worst or the best. I'm of the opinion myself that what Toby says is going to turn out true; for nobody ever goes near the Cartaret place these days. Lots of boys around home never even heard about it; and others couldn't be coaxed or hired to explore around a place they call haunted."