“Who’s Danny?” Holly asked. “Do I know him?”
“You’ve heard about him,” Judy reminded her. “He’s the orphan Meta Hanley told us about. Remember?”
“Now I do,” Holly answered. “She said he liked to watch the beavers. Was he there at the beaver dam?”
“He certainly was. When we first heard him Horace thought I was throwing my voice. Imagine! Then he jumped down from a tree where he was hiding and told us who he was. Horace called him a wood sprite. He’s such a strange little boy.”
“Everything you’ve told me so far is pretty strange,” agreed Holly. “Did you take him back to the orphanage?”
“Under protest. He wanted to stay and play watchman for the beavers.”
Holly laughed. Then she saw that Judy was serious and asked, “Why would he want to do that?”
“He had a reason,” Judy replied, “because someone must have removed that table leg minutes after we left. When Peter looked for it he found a broken place in the beaver dam and no lady—”
“It was an apparition,” declared Holly. “I don’t believe it was there in the first place. Horace is right. It couldn’t have washed down from the Roulsville flood.”
“But Horace saw it, too,” Judy objected.