"I don't think it's going to storm, do you, Chops?" asked Stacy.
"Nassir."
"There you are," declared the fat boy. "You pay your money and you take your choice. It is going to storm, and it isn't going to storm. You'd make a fine thermometer, Chops. Why, you'd have everybody crazy with the heat and the cold all at the same time."
The camp had been pitched in the narrow Smoky Pass of the Blue Ridge through which flowed a tributary of the French Broad River. The stream was very shallow at this time of the year, there having been but few rains, and its course was marked mostly by white sand and smoothly worn rocks, with here and there along the borders of the water course little colonies of the white, pink-petaled trillium gently nodding their heads at the ends of their long, slender stems.
The pass was silent save for the soft murmur of the stream and the songs of birds farther up the rocky sides in the dense foliage. It was an ideal camping place in a dry spell, but not any too desirable in times of high water.
Billy Veal had declared that it offered a perfectly easy route through to the Black Mountain spur for which the party was heading. Billy knew the mountains very well. The boys were obliged to admit that, but the difficulty was to find out what he did know, for he was as likely to say one thing as another. They had decided that the best plan would be to tell him where they wanted to go, leaving him to do the rest. The more questions they asked the less they knew.
"Did you ever see a ghost, Chops?" asked Stacy after they had settled down for an evening's enjoyment.
"Nassir. Yassir," answered the colored man, his eyes growing large.
"I'll show you a ghost some time. Would you like to be introduced to a ghost?" persisted Stacy.
"Yassir. Nassir. Doan' want see no ghosts."