“What did I tell yuh?” whispered Willie to his comrades of the Faithful Band. “Don’t that beat everything? And here it was all the time and we didn’t know it.”
“I’ll bet the old Captain was a pirate,” whispered Ned Larkins.
“I’ll bet so, too,” whispered another.
There is always somebody to throw cold water on our most cherished theories, as Willie Brown was soon to learn.
“If you didn’t take that thing in your own hands and examine it, you don’t know what it was, Willie,” remarked Tom Parker. “There is a mystery here alright enough, but I wouldn’t say you’re right, Willie.”
When they were a safe distance away they besought Tom to give them the benefit of his theory, but he absolutely refused. There was no good, he said, in his getting mixed up with it, for if he wasn’t mistaken there’d be trouble about this thing yet. Considerably sobered, the band dispersed.
The next day, though dejected and cast down, Willie Brown again circulated the fiery cross among his faithful followers, and did not even except the skeptic. He was fated to again fall in with Mr. Murphy, who had been doing some midnight scouting himself and was therefore in both glee and perplexity. By a few skillful questions and tentative remarks, Mr. Murphy obtained all the information he could desire.
The next day Joseph and his sister were feeling pretty stiff and sore after the unaccustomed exposure to the dew and cold. They decided not to work that night.
“You had better drag that big packing box over the hole, Joseph,” said Miss Katherine. “Somebody might fall in and break a leg.”
The Faithful Band appeared later than the previous night. Mr. Murphy had dropped a hint about the folly of undertaking certain kinds of expeditions at any other time than midnight. They saw the faint outlines of the box but nothing else. At first they were discomfited and then elated. Ned Larkins said that they must climb over the fence into the garden and dig in the exact spot where the box then was.