“What did you say about ghostly voices?” he asked.
“Aw, that was just a joke!” Frank replied.
“But I did actually hear some one speak!” Jimmie insisted.
“If you heard anything at all it was a bear, or a deer, or a squirrel or something like that!” Frank declared. “Just you wait a minute and see if you don’t hear some bear ordering us off his premises.”
While the boys stood close to the bole of a pine, listening, a shrill, excited voice came to them from some undiscoverable quarter.
At first they could not distinguish the words which were spoken. Jimmie turned to his chum with a half frightened grin on his face.
“Does that sound like bear-talk?” he asked.
“Not a bit of it!” Frank admitted, “but it may be one of the boys playing a joke on us. They are full of such tricks.”
Then the voice came to their ears again, lifted just above the sighing of the pines—sharp, imperative.
“Beat it! Beat it!”