Mark he didn’t say anything, but looked mighty sharp. In a minute the flash came again, and Mark says: “’Tain’t f-f-flyin’. It’s inside the mill. We s-seen it when it passed a winder or a crack or somethin’. Somebody’s p-p-prowlin’ around there.”
“Let’s git the constable,” says I.
“Constable n-nothin’,” says he. “No tellin’ where that old coot is, and by the time we got him located, no t-t-tellin’ what might happen. I’m goin’ down there to find out. You kin come or you kin stay.”
“I guess,” says Tallow, “that if you kin stand it, we kin.”
“Got your flash-light?” says I.
“No,” says Mark.
“All right,” says I, “but I hain’t what you might call tickled to death about skirmishin’ around that mill in the pitch dark. There hain’t even a moon.”
“All right,” says Binney. “You wait here.”
That made me mad. “I guess,” says I, “if a little runt like you kin monkey around in the dark without swallerin’ his Adam’s apple, I kin do about as well,” and I started off ahead of them just to show them that I had as much sand as anybody.
“Hold up!” says Mark. “Don’t go p-p-plungin’ down there like a buck sheep. Go cautious. We want to sneak up without bein’ seen. Here’s the idee. That there is a haunted castle where there’s a wicked magician l-l-livin’, and he’s goin’ to cast some kind of a spell on the king we’re workin’ for. We got jobs with a king to p-pertect him from all evil. See? And we got word this here m-magician is up to somethin’ underhand. Maybe he’s goin’ to turn the king into a statue made out of lard or somethin’, and then run off with the p-p-princess and swipe the kingdom. Now, we hain’t got no magic, so all we kin do is sneak up on him when he hain’t lookin’ and grab him before he can make any magic passes and gag him before he can utter any magic words. That’s the notion. When we got him tied up and bound and all t-t-that, we kin lock him in a dungeon with n-nothin’ to eat but bread and water till the magic is starved out of him.”