I listened. But I couldn’t listen very good for my panting apparatus made too much noise. My heart was pounding, too. Two, three, four minutes passed. I wasn’t panting so hard now. But however much I stretched my ears I could hear no sound of footsteps or distant underground voices. Suddenly, though, I did catch the sound of something behind me. Boy, did I ever jump! Coming out of the willows was a black shape that crawled along, animal-like, on its stomach. Or was it a man on his hands and knees? Anyway, whatever it was, animal or man, I knew that its burning eyes were fastened on me. This was more than I could stand. And screeching bloody murder I lit out on the tear for the stone house. Scooting along, I expected every minute to feel the awful thing grab my heels. But I got away from it.
Tumbling into the house, who should I see, first of all, to my great joy and amazement, but Poppy! Yes, sir, not an apparition, or whatever you call it, but old Poppy, himself, with his hair all mussed up and his shirt-tail hanging out. He and Mrs. O’Mally were bending over the couch. And when I got closer I saw that they were working on a boy.
“Is he dead?” I gasped, everything else going out of my mind.
“Unconscious,” says Poppy, bathing the boy’s forehead with a wet towel. Then he looked up. “Ever see him before, Jerry?”
It was a boy about our age. With his closed eyes and white face it was hard, of course, to tell exactly what he looked like. But there was nothing about him that seemed familiar to me. Certainly, was my conclusion, he wasn’t a kid from my own neighborhood.
“Uncle Abner!” the boy whispered, with a sort of convulsive movement of his arms. “Uncle Abner!”
“Do you know him?” Poppy asked me again.
“No,” I shook my head.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MAN IN THE CAVE
Having completely forgotten about the supposedly strangled cat, you can imagine how my eyes popped out when the bobtailed mouse catcher unexpectedly meandered into the sitting room.