"And didn't you ever go back there?" said Pullen, "when you got older?"
"Oh, yes, I did, but not for a year after, and during that year I dreamed of that house and one or a dozen skeleton hands, countless times. Finally I mustered up spunk, went there one day all alone, set the old ruin on fire, and then ran as fast as my legs would carry me to a hilltop half a mile away, and stood and watched the fire. The place was so hidden away no one saw it burn except me, and I never told for fear of consequences."
"And did you ever outgrow the belief that you really saw a skeleton hand open that door?" said Pullen, reaching forward to pick up an ember and light the pipe he had just refilled.
Manson was silent for a few moments, as he lay resting his head on one hand and watching the firelight play hide-and-seek among the pine boughs overhead.
"No, to tell you the truth, Frank," he replied at last, slowly, "I do not think I ever did. Of course, I know I did not see what I thought I did, and yet I have not quite outgrown the scare. I won't admit that I believe in ghosts, and yet the thought of them, owing perhaps to that boyhood fright, has a sort of deadly fascination for me. I believe and yet I do not believe, and if I were told I could see one by going anywhere, no matter how grewsome the spook was, I could not resist going."
"You ought to have lived where I came from," observed Pullen, looking curiously at his comrade; "for about twenty miles from my home is an island known as 'The Pocket,' that is fairly swarming with ghosts."
"Tell me about it," said Manson, suddenly interested.
"Well, it is a long yarn," replied Pullen, "but, from your make-up, the island is just such a spot as you would enjoy visiting. As I told you the other night, I was born and brought up on an island off the coast of Maine, and when I was quite a lad I first heard about this island, and that no one ever went there because it was haunted. I wasn't old enough to understand what being haunted meant, but later on I did. They used to tell about it being a hiding-place for smugglers before I was born, and that a murder had been committed there and that some one in a fishing boat had seen a man fully ten feet tall, standing on a cliff on it, one night. Dad, who was a sea captain, used to laugh at all this, and yet almost everybody believed there was some mystery connected with it. Another thing, I guess, helped give it a bad name was the fact that a ship was wrecked on it once, and no one discovered it until long after, and then they found four or five skeletons among the rocks. Another queer thing about this island that is really a fact is, that any time, day or night, you can hear a strange, bellowing sound like that of a mad bull, coming from somewhere on it. When there is a storm you can hear it for miles away. The sound can't be located anywhere, and yet you can hear it all the time. If you are one side, it seems to come from the other, and go around to that side and it is back where you came from. Inside the island is a circular pocket or walled-in harbor, like the crater of a volcano, that is entered through a narrow passage between two cliffs. Altogether it's a curious place, but as for ghosts—well, I've been there many a time and never saw one yet. But then, I do not believe in spooks, and perhaps that accounts for it. It's like the believers in spiritualism, that can readily see their dead ancestors' faces peering out of a cabinet, and all that sort of bosh, but I never could. I'll bet," with a laugh, "that you could go to Pocket Island and see ghosts by the dozen."
"I would like to go there," replied Manson quietly, "and if we ever get home alive, I will."
"Come and make a visit, and I'll take you there," said Pullen; "that is" (soberly) "if I ever go home."