“Did you have your supper?” Pearl asked. “I’ll get you some if you didn’t.”
“I haven’t had any, Pearl, and I’ll tell Mac what a nice girl you are if you’ll get me some,” Barry answered, with a grin.
“Oh, get out!” Pearl retorted, her cheeks flushing. “If you keep on talking that way, I won’t do anything for you!”
“I got your letter, son,” Mr. Garrison told him. “So you moved into the lodge when you found that someone had been upstairs in the place. Have any luck? Did you see anything?”
“The only luck we had was bad luck,” Barry replied, as he took off his coat and hat and hung his skates in the cellar-way. “We saw the spook and thought we had him bottled up, but he got away.”
“What!” cried his father, in genuine astonishment. His mother looked on in surprise, and Pearl turned from the ice box to glance at him.
“Oh, Barry! What did he look like?”
“He looked just like a man, but we didn’t see his face,” her brother informed her, as he washed his hands. “I’ll tell you all about it while I eat.”
They were all so eager to hear his story that all three of them fell to waiting on him, and while he ate he told them the complete story of the black shadow who had made the thumps and knocks. His father listened with puckered brow and leaned forward on the kitchen table in his eagerness.
“I’m glad you and Kent weren’t lost in that storm,” his mother said, looking fondly at her clean-cut, vigorous son.