Tom touched nothing; he even obliterated the marks of their footsteps, and left the skeletons as they were.

“Was the creature who had done this deed a ghoul?” he could not help thinking as he walked silently back to the hut with Ginger Brandy.

“Brandy,” he said that afternoon, “let us have an early dinner to-night.”

“Sartinly, sah. But—”

“But what, my friend?”

“Dere am sumfing strange in your eye, sah. You is goin’ to de grabe after dinner to watch?”

“You have guessed aright, Brandy. I am going to the grave to watch. Be this creature man or beast, fiend or ghoul, I shall get to the bottom of the mystery to-night.”

“Brandy go too?”

“No, you must stop in the hut; and you must keep Black Tom in too. The cat might spoil all.”

“I stay at home den, marster. But I dreffully frightened.”