"Hulloa, lads, I was just thinking of starting out after you. Seen anything?"
"We've had a scare," said Compton, lightly, with a meaning look at
Mr. Hume; but already the observant eyes of the Hunter had seen that
Venning was upset.
"All right; just try this roast mealie;" and the strong hand steadied the boy to his seat.
Mr. Hume talked, while they ate, about the ceremony of his initiation as vice-chief and of the long, wordy arguments he had listened to in a case at law concerning the ownership of a monkey, to which there were two claimants, the boy who had caught it, and the man who owned the garden where it had been caught.
"Now," he said, when they had eaten, "you have something to tell me.
Go ahead."
They related the incident, which lost nothing of its repulsiveness by the relation:
"And you saw no one."
"No one alive, but I believe there was trickery. There must have been," said Compton, with knit brows.
"I think so too, but the trick was horrible enough to produce the effect desired. I must say I felt a creepy sensation when I was down there yesterday."
"But we saw no one," said Venning, with a shudder.