It was about an hour after noon when dinner was ready, and all of them admitted the result was well worth waiting for. That frosty November air had given them an enormous appetite, and everything tasted better than it could possibly do at home; so for a certain length of time little was said, since they were too busy in disposing of the meal to talk.
When the edge had been taken from their appetites they fell into a disjointed conversation, and almost every subject under the sun was discussed from the standpoint of scouts.
Afterwards they lounged around for a while, being really too full to think of doing anything strenuous. As this was not supposed to be a regular camping trip of the whole troop, Elmer had not laid out any particular programme looking to their practicing the various "stunts" which scouts are interested in. Under ordinary conditions there would have been all manner of events underway, such as wigwagging classes, tracking advocates, new wrinkles in nature-study unfolded; photography of wild animals and birds in their native haunts undertaken, and many other educational features that make the camping out experience of Boy Scouts so vastly superior to those of other lads who simply go to the woods to loaf away the time, swim, and fish, and eat.
Of course each fellow was at liberty to employ himself as best he thought would give him the most pleasure, only there was no authority brought to bear, and no one felt constrained to do anything that he did not particularly care for.
"Where's Chatz gone?" asked Lil Artha, after they had been knocking around in this fashion for nearly an hour after eating, and several of them showed signs of wanting to be on the move.
"Oh! I saw him slip away a while back," remarked Toby, "and chances are he's prowling in and out of that old shebang over beyond the trees, the haunted house that Judge Cartaret built fifty years or so ago. Chatz is clear daft on the subject of spirits, you know. And from what I've seen of him, it wouldn't surprise me a little bit if the fellow before we left here, tried to get us to make some sort of a ghost trap, to grab that wonderful spook in."
"If he ever did that," Elmer remarked, "it would show that deep down in his heart Chatz didn't believe in any such notion; because if there was such a thing as a real ghost no trap we could manufacture would ever hold it. If Chatz proposed that to us he'd be as much as saying he believed the ghost to be a man, playing a game for some reason or other."
"But," interposed Ty Collins, "what sort of a game would make anybody prance around here night after night, with a sheet wrapped around him, and p'raps luminous paint on his face, like I remember a ghost once did. But in that case there was a good reason, for he wanted to give a bad name to the property so he could buy it in for a song. That wouldn't be the case here with the Cartaret place, you know."
"Well, it's foolish trying to guess a thing when we haven't even seen the ghost," George interrupted the others to say; "and I've got to be shown such a thing before I'll take the least stock in it; though I must say that as a rule Chatz is a long-headed chap, and not easy fooled."
When Elmer heard George say this he fancied that it would only take one mysterious ghostly manifestation to make the doubter an ardent believer in supernatural things. Scoffer that George was, once he saw with his own eyes, he went to the other extreme, and became firmly convinced. It was just like the swing of the pendulum with him every time.