"It's a voodoo knife, that's what it is. See the way the handle is carved."
Stella looked and saw a yellowed handle of what once might have been ivory, carved in the shape of a running goat with several quasi-human faces low down near the hilt.
"What are you going to do with it?" she said.
"I told you. Give it to Mr. Maudsley. It's his."
"How do you know it's his?"
"This is Mr. Maudsley's barn, isn't it? Besides, it was near his other stuff."
Stella was not enthusiastic. "Papa won't like it. He got mad when you nailed that pie-tin to Mr. Maudsley's hand."
"Papa won't know a thing about it. Come on."
It was hot in the cornfield. The morning sun beat down fiercely and the air smelled of damp earth. The ground between the rows of stubble was marked with tiny channels the running water had cut the night before. But the shocks were dry again and in the slight breeze they whispered and rustled gently. The two children made a bee-line for the center of the field until they came to the two cross boards that served as a framework for the scarecrow.
The scarecrow was fashioned of some old clothing which had once belonged to a fat man—overalls, a coat of what might have been a Sunday suit at one time, and an ancient felt hat—castaways which the children had found in the barn. The cardboard face, marked in black crayon, a little blurred now from the rain, had been copied by Jimmy from an old photograph the boy had come upon among some old papers when he had cleaned out the attic. Jimmy had decided that even a crow wouldn't be fooled by a faceless scarecrow.