“Oh, my soul!” exclaimed S’manthy, raising her hands toward the rafters again. “Have they got ghosts up there?”
“You just bet they have,” answered Peleg, trembling all over. “But Nat didn’t seem afraid of them at all.”
Mr. Graves leaned back against the post near which he was sitting, stretched his legs out straight before him and looked fixedly at the ground. He had never heard of ghosts being in the woods, and this made him wonder if he would dare go after the cows when they failed to come up.
“I don’t think you had better go back there any more, Peleg,” said he, when he had taken time to think the matter over.
“You may just bet I won’t go back. I have not got use for a boy who will talk to them in language I cannot understand. And worse than that, he led the way to old man Nickerson’s farm by the back way, through bushes that grew thicker’n the hair on a dog’s back, and he wanted me to come back the same way. Mighty clear of me!”
“I reckon we had best go and let Jonas know about this,” said Mr. Graves, after thinking once more upon the matter.
“Well, you can go and I will stay here and get something to eat,” said Peleg. “He will find Nat within a few rods of the old man’s house. Dog-gone such luck! Why couldn’t the old man have left his money out in plain sight so that a fellow could get it?”
“Did you see any of the ghosts?” said his mother, in a low tone.
“No, I didn’t, and I kept a close watch for them, too. You see Nat says they don’t come around until at night. I wonder if there is anything left of that boy up there?”
“I hope to goodness that they have cleaned him out entirely,” said Mr. Graves, angrily. “If we can’t have any of that money I don’t want him to have it, either. Now you go in and take a bite, and I will make up my mind what we are going to do.”