The lads, big and little, went to bed, and soon to sleep; Fritz’s small rifle and Luke’s pistol lying ready at hand against an early waking. But visions of white, drenching floods, burglars, and ghosts mingled with little Fritz’s dreams; induced in great measure by an unusually bountiful supper which Rosetta had given him as a consolation for his accident, and partly by their having sat up quite late to finish a most thrilling tale and to taste of a lunch which had been put up for their out-of-door breakfast.
“If we eat it over-night, we’ll make sure of it,” said Luke, facetiously. He was always hungry, and Fritz was not to be outdone in that or any other matter by any big boy living. So he ate as long as he could, and then he dreamed as fast as he could; and in the midst of both, it always afterwards seemed to him, he had sat up in bed and seen Luke at the window, looking out with a very mysterious air.
“What is it, Lukey?”
“Whis-st! Bu-ur-gla-rs!”
Fritz could almost hear Luke’s teeth chatter.
“Cracky! I bet he’s afraid! Abry-ham said he would be, if a real one came to town. I ain’t, though. I’m a gentleman. Gentlemen ain’t never afraid of nothin’. Pooh! I’ll show him!”
Creeping so softly out of bed in his bare feet that his companion did not hear him, he seized his little rifle and cautiously crept to the other open window.
On the grass below, a white figure was moving slowly about, in a vague sort of fashion, which, had either protector of the defenceless been wiser, he would have known belonged neither to any burglar nor ghost which ever troubled the repose of the peaceful.
Luke’s own weapon was poised, but he was so nervous and intensely excited that he delayed to fire; else would the tragedy have been great. But while he paused to steady himself, crack went the other rifle, and down dropped the “ghost.”
Then and there arose such shrieks and screams as no burglar or disembodied spirit ever uttered, and which drove Luke in despair to hide his head beneath the bed-clothes, and Fritz to stand and gaze with rueful, half-dazed wonder upon one—two—three—a whole yard full of ghosts!