"Now, let me tell you what's a fact," said Dan, after he had taken a few minutes in which to consider his father's proposition. "I don't reckon it will be any use for us to go back and try to find that there letter. I'll bet anything that the hant has found it and carried it miles away before this time."
"Dannie, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Silas, impatiently, "Don't you know that hants can't tote nothing away, 'cause they're sperits? All they can do is to jump up in front of a feller and frighten him; but they can't do no harm to you. We'll take our guns along, and if he's fool enough to show himself we'll pepper him good fashion."
"And never hurt him at all," said Dan. "He'll be just as sassy with his hide full of bird-shot as he was before. Now, pap, you wait and see if I ain't right."
Silas did not pay much attention to these words of warning, but they were afterward recalled to his mind in a manner that was most unexpected and startling. What he was thinking of just now was the letter. He was very anxious to find it, for he was afraid that it might fall into the hands of some one who would use it to his injury. When he turned about and led the way into the cabin, Dan followed him with reluctant steps.
"You needn't be no ways skeery about going up the road in broad daylight," said Silas, encouragingly. "It ain't likely that that there hant will go away from the cave and roam around the country, scaring folks, for the fun of the thing. He ain't out there in the woods, and you never heard him."
"I did, for a fact," protested Dan.
"I don't believe it, all the same," answered Silas, as he took down his heavy double-barrel and measured the loads in it with the ramrod. "He's come back to the cave to watch them five hundred pounds of money, and see that nobody don't carry 'em away; and he'll never leave there."
"Then how are we going to get that fortune?" inquired Dan.
"We'll just walk right in and take it without saying a word to him," said Silas boldly. "I've heard my father tell that them hants can't harm you if you ain't afraid of 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing, and that ain't two," said Dan, as he shouldered his gun and followed his father from the cabin. "I ain't a going to run no risk. I'll help you find the cave, but I won't go into it, I bet you. I don't want to hear something screeching at me through the dark, and see great eyes of fire—"