They had been sitting side by side in the center of the room so that there was a clear space between the window at the foot of Bob’s bed and the wall opposite. Now they quickly got down on their hands and knees and crept across the floor until they reached the end of the room close by the head of the bed. They had removed the netting from the window in that end of the cabin and in another moment they were both crouching close to the ground outside. The night was intensely dark as the moon had set early in the evening and a south wind had covered the sky with thick clouds so that not a star was visible. For a long moment they listened. The heavy boughs over head sighed and moaned as they swayed in the breeze but no other sound reached them.
“Keep close behind me and don’t make a sound,” Bob cautioned as he got to his feet and started.
“It’s dark enough to cut,” Jack replied. “But you can’t lose me.”
Noiselessly they stole through the thick forest, their feet making not the slightest sound on the ground, thickly carpeted with pine needles. Every few steps they stopped to listen. Once a sharp crack brought them to a sudden halt and they heard a large animal as it bounded off between the trees.
“Only a deer,” Bob whispered.
“Sure, a ghost doesn’t make that kind of a noise,” Jack chuckled. “But aren’t we round pretty near far enough?”
“We must be nearly in line with that window, I should say, but it’s pretty hard to be sure in this pitch blackness.”
He turned slightly to the right and went ahead for about thirty feet when he again stopped.
“Jack,” he whispered as the sound of his brother’s breathing did not reach him.
There was no answer.