There was something going on that he could not understand. Whether this mysterious something had awakened him or not, Russ lay straining his ears to catch a repetition of the sound. Then it came—a sound that made the boy "creep" all over it was so shuddery!
"Laddie! Laddie!" he whispered, nudging the boy next to him. "Don't you hear it?"
Laddie was not easily awakened. When Laddie went to sleep it was, as the children say, "for keeps." Russ had to punch him with his elbow more than once before the smaller boy awakened.
"Oh, oh! Is it morning?" murmured Laddie.
"Listen!" hissed Russ right in his ear. "That man's being mur—murdered!"
"Mur—murdered?" quavered Laddie in response. "You—you tell daddy about it, Russ Bunker. Don't you tell me. I don't believe he is, anyway. Who's mur—murderin' him?"
"I don't know who's doing it," admitted Russ, shaking as much as Laddie was.
"How do you know it's—it's being done?" repeated Laddie, his doubt growing as he became more fully awake.
"He says so. He says so himself. And if he says he's being murdered, he ought to know—Oh!"
Again the doleful sound reached their ears, this time Laddie hearing as well as Russ the moaning of a voice which uttered a muffled cry of "Mur-r-rder!"