“No, I reckon I will just take it along. What you have said about the ghosts may be true; but I don’t believe in such things as the trees and bushes telling him where to go. Come on now, and we’ll go up and see Jonas.”
“And are you going to leave me here all alone?” inquired Mrs. Graves, who went into the house for a shawl to throw over her head. “I’m going, too.”
“Now, S’manthy,” began her husband.
“I know all about it; but I ain’t a going to stay here all by myself after such talk as we have had,” said the woman, determinedly. “I have some business with Jonas’s wife as much as you have with him.”
Mr. Graves said no more. He probably knew how an argument would come out with his wife. He cast apprehensive glances at the bushes as he walked along, and seemed to be much occupied with his own thoughts. The money was there, there could be no mistake about that, and he had intended to go up there that very day so as to be on hand in case Peleg needed assistance; but the boy’s returning home with such a story had put new ideas into his head. Taking into consideration the way he felt now he would not have gone a step toward Mr. Nickerson’s woods if he knew the foot of every tree in them had a gold mine buried beneath it which he could have for the digging. He fully credited the tales about the ghosts; the rest of it he did not put any faith in.
“That’s the end of my dreams,” he muttered, as he walked along. “I say as Peleg did, dog-gone such luck! If the old man had left his money out where we could find it, well and good; but, as it stands, I have got to be a poor man all my life.”
In due time they arrived at Jonas’s house where they found his wife engaged in getting breakfast while her husband, with Caleb to help him, was engaged, down to the barn. Mrs. Graves stopped in the house, which she speedily turned upside down with her stories, while Mr. Graves kept on and found Jonas sitting on an inverted bucket, meditatively chewing a piece of straw, and Caleb walking around with his hands in his pockets. They had been discussing Nat’s absence, but they could not come to any determination about it. Nat was gone, it was money took him away and how were they going to work to cheat him out of it?
“Howdy,” said Jonas, who, upon looking up, discovered Mr. Graves approaching. “Have you started out bright and early this morning to go hunting?”
“Well—no,” replied Mr. Graves, taking his rifle from his shoulder. “I did not know but I might see a squirrel or two bobbing around. Seen anything of Nat lately?”
“No, I have not. Do you know what has become of him?”