"What is Hen claiming to have done, anyway?" Darrin inquired.
"Oh, Hen says—but come along and hear him for yourselves," Toby finished. "Hen is just a little way down the street, holding forth to a lot of fellows."
"Come along, then," nodded Tom. "Perhaps we can slip in behind Hen without his seeing us, and then we'll know all that he did while we were snowbound."
Toby piloted them. A block and a half down Main Street a group of some twenty Grammar School boys stood, gathered closely around a central object. When Dick and his chums slipped up to the outer edge of the crowd they discovered that central object to be Hen Dutcher, whose back was turned to them.
Though Hen didn't know who was now near him, several of the other boys did, and they passed the wink.
"Hen, tell us again just how it was that you cowed Mr. Fits when he first showed up at the cabin," urged one of the juvenile bystanders.
"Huh! There wasn't much to cow," retorted Hen airily. "Dick Prescott and his chums were pretty well scared, I can tell you. But there was an air rifle standing in the corner, and I knew I could get it if I needed it. So, when Fits ordered Dick Prescott to get him some supper, and Dick was just going to do it, I stepped up, as cool as anything, and I said: 'No, sir; Dick Prescott won't get you any supper in this camp. You'll get out of here, mister,' says I, 'and you'll be quick about it, too.' Well, when Fits looked into my eyes and saw that he couldn't scare me any, he began to whine, and says: 'All right, sir; I won't insist about any supper, but I must sleep here to-night. I'd freeze to death out in the big snowstorm.' 'You won't sleep here, any more than you'll eat here,' says I to Fits. 'But you can sleep out in the cook shack behind this cabin, if you want to.' Fits, he tried to beg off, but when he found he couldn't, he just marched out of the cabin like a man and went to the cook shack."
"Was Fits the one who set fire to the cook shack?" asked another boy in the crowd.
"I—er—I'm not going to tell you anything about that," retorted Hen, trying to conceal his embarrassment under an air of mystery.
"But say, Hen," put in another boy, across the crowd, after winking at Dick, "I really don't see how you could help being scared when you heard those ghost noises the first time."