“All right,” said the storekeeper. “I will set the whole thing right here in this corner, and if my partner is in here you will know them when you see them. Any thing else that I can show you?”
“Nothing else, thank you,” replied Nat “I have every thing I need.”
“What are you boys going to do up there in the woods?” asked the storekeeper. “You are not going after rabbits with nothing but a single barrel shotgun. You won’t get enough to pay you for your ammunition.”
“Oh, no; we are going up there to see about some timber that belongs to us.”
“Well, don’t let the ghosts catch you,” said the man, with a laugh.
“Ghosts!” replied Peleg; and he let the butt of his single barrel heavily down upon the floor.
“Yes; there is lots of them up there.”
“Why—why—whereabouts?” inquired Peleg; and it was all he could do to pronounce the words so that the storekeeper could understand him.
“Well, I don’t know that they have any particular place, but the heft of them appears up about old man Nickerson’s farm,” said the man; and he drew a little on his imagination because he saw that Peleg was frightened. “If anybody goes on that place he wants to look out. You see,” here the storekeeper leaned his elbows on the counter and sank his voice almost to a whisper. “They used to tell here before the war that the old man was worth a power of money, and the rebels came here to gobble it up.”
“Did they get any?” asked Peleg.