“No, it wasn’t a dream. For we both were wide awake. Jerry declares it was a whispering ghost that visited us. And maybe he’s right. I can’t say that it wasn’t a ghost. Certainly it acted queer enough to be one.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” boasted Scoop.
“Neither did I,” I shot back at him, looking him straight in the eye, “until last night.”
“A ghost! You’re funny, Jerry.”
“All my life,” I followed up, waggling, “I’ve carried in my mind a sort of idea of what a ghost’s voice would be like, if there was such a [[27]]thing as a ghost. And twice last night I heard exactly that kind of a voice.”
“It was a queer voice,” Peg told Scoop, serious. “Sort of hollow, like a whisper in a dark tomb.”
“Jinks! If you fellows keep on talking about tombs, backing each other up in your crazy story, you’ll have me actually believing that your visitor was a ghost.”
“If it wasn’t a ghost,” I said, to a good point, “why did the Strickers scream and run away?”
“The Strickers are likely to do anything.”
“They wouldn’t have been afraid of a man.”