The way he lived all alone, with just one man that did his cooking and helped take care of the big house, made folks talk, because it was queer. Come to think about it, everything about that house of Mr. Wigglesworth’s was queer. Sort of spooky, I’d call it.
And now he was dead.
“Yes, sir,” said Lawyer Jones, “he’s dead and gone. I was called up there before daylight, Tidd, and what d’you suppose I found in the house?”
“Wa-al,” says Mr. Tidd, “I dunno ’s I’d be prepared to state.”
“A boy,” says Lawyer Jones, and looked at us with the kind of expression a man wears when he expects he’s going to startle you. And he did it, all right.
“A b-boy!” says Mark Tidd.
“A boy,” says Lawyer Jones again. “About fifteen, I calc’late he is.”
“Who is he?” says Mark.
“That,” says Lawyer Jones, “is what I’d give ten dollars to find out.”
“Didn’t you ask him?” says Tallow.