“Drowned? I thought you just said he was shot by a posse.”
“That’s one story. The other one is that he was drowned in his bed. You see,” I ran off into my usual nonsense, “he slept in the attic. There was a knothole in the roof. And rather than have the rain beat on his face as he lay in bed he shoved his peg-leg into the hole. The rain swelled the wooden leg so that it stuck tight. And the leg being hollow, the water ran down inside of it, as though through a spout, and drowned him.”
“I’d as soon believe that story,” laughed Poppy, “as the other one. Ghosts! Pooh! What we heard in the house wasn’t a ghost. Nor was it a cat, either.”
“Maybe,” was my further nonsense, “Mrs. O’Mally has a new husband. And she’s modestly keeping him out of sight.”
“Shall we break the news to Mr. McGinty?” grinned Poppy.
“I guess,” says I in good sense, “we’d better keep our mouths shut. For whatever it was that we heard it’s none of our business.”
“What puzzles me,” says Poppy, “is the way the woman acted. The noise wasn’t a surprise to her. Yet, if she knew what caused it, why was she so scared?”
That was queer, I agreed.
CHAPTER VIII
READY FOR BUSINESS
We weren’t so fed up on business stuff that we had forgotten how to be boys, with a liking for the kind of fun that is particularly boys’ fun. So, as it was still early in the afternoon, and there was nothing special for us to do in Tutter, anyway, we headed for the river to do the usual mid-summer “high-dive” and “who-can-bring-up-the-most-mud” stuff.