"What makes you think there are two of them?"
"Because Mr. Brown ran against two prowlers in the woods last night."
"Who is Mr. Brown?"
Joe replied that he was one of the men he had been obliged to order out of Mr. Warren's woods on the previous day, and then he went on to tell of the visit he had had from him the night before, and how frightened he was when he saw the man's face at the window.
When he described how Brierly had managed to evade his employer's demand for the return of the twenty-five dollars that had been paid him, Tom and Bob laughed heartily, and declared that Brierly had served him just right.
Joe did not neglect to tell how Mr. Brown had abused his hospitality, and his account of it aroused the ire of the two listeners, who declared that if that man ever got lost in their woods, he need not trouble himself to hunt up their cabin, for they would not take him in.
"What kind of a looking thing was that dummy?" inquired Bob, coming back to the matter in which he was interested more than he was in Mr. Brown and his fortunes.
Joe was obliged to confess that he could not answer that question, because Dan's description of the thing that he and his father shot at, surpassed all belief. Whether it was the appearance of the ghost itself, or the fact that the four loads of shot that had been fired at it had had no perceptible effect upon it, or the terrifying shrieks that awoke the echoes of the gorge—whether it was one or all of these that had frightened Silas into saying that he would not haul any more wood down from the mountain, Joe could not tell; but he thought those men ought to be made to give an account of themselves. If they had not violated the law in some way, why did they take so much pains to keep out of sight?
"We were at first inclined to believe that some of the mischief-loving guests at the Beach had a hand in it," observed Tom. "When a lot of city people turn themselves loose in the country, they will go for anything that has fun in it, no matter what it is."