"Wait, and listen!" said Elmer, in a whisper.
"You didn't get the whole of that straight, Elmer," Toby told him, quickly, in a low, husky voice; "you ought to have said, 'Stop! Look! Listen!' That's the way it always is at railroad crossings!"
"Hist! Be still!" cautioned the leader.
They could hear loud excited voices near by, accompanied by the stamping of horses' hoofs, as though the excitement had communicated to the team used by Connie Mallon and his three cronies in their rival nutting expedition.
"Now, let's start up again, and add the finishing touches!" Elmer told the others, when a dozen more seconds had dragged past, and they felt they might safely assume that the fugitives must have untied the team, as well as scrambled into the wagon.
Once again did that strange chorus break forth, with Elmer groaning through his birch bark horn, and the others doing all in their power to accompany him in regular orthodox ghostly style, in as far as their limited education along these lines went.
Taken altogether the racket was certainly enough to scare almost any one. Snorts and prancing on the part of the horses announced that they were now sharing the general excitement. Then came cries urging haste, and presently the plain unmistakable smack of a whip being brought down with decided emphasis on the backs of the animals, several times repeated.
With that there was the crunch of wheels, and away dashed the two-horse wagon, making for the road which Connie knew must not be far away. Once or twice the scouts had fugitive glimpses of the departing vehicle as it flashed past small glades where the view happened to be unobstructed; and it was certainly "killing," as George called it, to see those fellows bouncing about in the bed of the wagon, holding on for dear life, and with Connie plying the whip savagely, while the horses leaped and tugged and strained to make fast time over the uneven floor of the woods.
The echoes of the flight grew fainter in the distance, and presently as they stood there the scouts could tell from the change in sounds that those who were fleeing from the wrath of the ghosts must have reached the harder road, for the hoof beats of the horses came with a pounding stroke.
Gradually even this was dying away. Then the five boys turned and looked at each other, with their faces wreathed in huge grins.