"Don't Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, shivering all over, as if some one had drawn an icicle along his back.
"Well, that's the way them hants do, ain't it?" asked the boy. "I'd as soon be knocked in the head with a club as to have something scare me to death. Come on, if you're coming. I ain't going ahead, and that's all there is about it."
The two brave fellows were by this time fairly in the road, and Silas was prudently slackening his pace, to allow Dan to get in advance of him.
The latter's description of the greeting that would be extended to them by the guardian spectre, when they went into the cave after the money that was supposed to be concealed there, had taken all his courage away from him, and, if there was any danger ahead, Silas did not want to be the first to meet it.
Dan, who was quick to notice this, also slackened his own pace, and the two walked slower and slower, until they came to a dead stop.
"I see what you're up to, old man," said Dan, shaking his clenched hand at his sire, "and you might as well know, first as last, that you can't play no such trick onto me. I'll stick close to you, and face the music as long as you do; but you shan't shove me in front of you not one inch."
It was no use for Silas to protest that he had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for the case was too clear against him; so he pushed ahead again, and Dan, true to his promise, kept close at his side. They walked on for a quarter of a mile or more, holding their guns in readiness for instant use, and never saying a word to each other, and at last the deep silence that brooded over the surrounding woods became too much for the ferryman's nerves. He broke it by saying, in a suppressed whisper:
"You read far enough in that letter to know that there's five hundred pounds of money into that there cave, didn't you? That's as much as me and you both can pack away on our backs in one trip, and it beats me how that feller could have toted it so far. Now where be we going to hide it? That's what's been a bothering of me. Can't you think up some good—Laws a massy! what's the matter of you?" exclaimed Silas; for Dan suddenly seized his father's arm with a grip that made him wonder.
They were just going around the first turn in the road. Instead of replying to his father's question in words, Dan raised his hand and pointed silently toward the bushes a short distance away.