“Hey, up there!” he yelled, with his voice trembling and squeaky. “Hey!”
We never said a word; just kept as still as though we weren’t there at all; and I guess that helped. It always is sort of creepy to call somebody you’re sure is right there and not hear a sound. You get to wondering what’s happened to them, and—well, you know that kind of cold and wrinkly feeling you get just at the back of your neck. And to top it off we gave the old bell another lick. He turned and made tracks for the house.
Well, we weren’t helped much so far. “Give it to the dog,” says Mark; and we did, twice, good and hard. He set up an awful yelping and the man began to run, but he stopped and began whistling and calling. The dog went running after him, pretty glad to get away, I guess. I had it figured out the old man wanted some kind of company and wanted it bad, so he’d rather have the dog with him than watching us. He went hustling up to the back door, and just as he opened it Binney whanged the bell again. Well, Mister Man just waited to let in his dog and slammed the door shut so hard he ’most broke its window; and on top of everything I banged a stone right against the panel. I’ll bet he thought the ghost was rapping for him sure.
“He don’t come out again for a week,” says Plunk; and it did look as though he’d holed himself in for quite a stay.
“Guess we can git down now,” says Mark.
We climbed down the ladder cautious and sneaked out through the evergreens and behind the hedge, keeping out of sight of the house till we got to the road. Nobody made a move after us.
“Wonder who lives here?” Mark was always curious.
“Look on the mail-box,” I told him; “the name’ll be there.”
He crawled along to the little tin box on the post in front of the gate. The name was Harvey Willis. None of us thought anything of that then, but it wasn’t very long before Mark did think something of it by putting two and two together. He was great for doing that. Give him a couple of facts, and he was the greatest fellow that ever was for taking them and reasoning all sorts of other facts out of them. I never saw his beat.
Binney’s old horse was standing just where we left him, and I thought he looked kind of disappointed to see us come back. Most probably he’d been having a horse-dream about standing right there in the shade forever with lots of fresh green grass to eat and no work to do. Seeing us, and Mark Tidd in special, must have been quite a shock to him. I’d sort of hate to have to pull Mark around myself.