"Not in the least," whispered Bob, giving his friend a prod in the ribs with his elbow; whereupon Tom laid his finger by the side of his nose and winked first one eye and then the other, to show that he fully understood Bob.
"Stranger things than that have happened," continued Silas, in a voice that was plainly audible to the two boys behind the evergreens, "and I don't see why it can't happen to me as well as to anybody else. Wouldn't that be a joyful day to me, though? I'd bust up that flat the very first thing I did, and tell the fellers that tooted the horn that I was done being servant for them or anybody else. No, I wouldn't do that, either," added Silas, after reflecting a minute. "I'd give it to Dan and Joe to make a living with, and then I wouldn't have to spend any of my fortune on their grub and clothes."
"What a stingy old hulks he is!" whispered Bob, as the ferryman took a reluctant step toward the wood-pile. "I say, Tom, don't you think there is a robber's cave about here somewhere? I should think there ought to be, with so many ghosts hanging around. It don't look to me as though they could be here for nothing."
"That's what I think," replied Tom, in the same cautious whisper. "I shouldn't wonder a bit if there was a freebooter's stronghold somewhere in these mountains."
"With lots of money in it?" continued Bob.
"Piles of it," said Tom. "As much as there is in the treasury at Washington."
Bob turned toward his friend with a look of indignant astonishment on his face.
"And you knew it all the time, and never told Silas about it!" he exclaimed. "Can't you see how badly he wants it, and how confident he is that he is going to get it? You ought to have attended to it long ago."
"You're very right," said Tom, meekly. "Now I will tell you what I'll do: If you will print a letter—it must be printed, you know, for Silas can't read writing—telling how the money got into the cave in the first place, I'll draw a map that will aid him in finding it."