“You told me very little,” he answered. “You were afraid I’d get a story out of it, but never fear! We’ve printed enough of that spooky stuff.”
“This was spooky, all right,” Judy said with a shiver. “The trees warned us or the men, I’m not sure which, not to look for it.”
“You see,” Honey pointed out, “since we have no idea what it is, the whole thing is rather hard to explain. But you should know, Horace. You said you heard the trees talk before. What did they say? Can you remember?”
He thought about it for a minute.
“I’ve forgotten a lot of it, but once they told me to keep still, and I didn’t dare open my mouth all day. They really frightened me. I was something of a sissy then,” he confessed, “but Judy cured me of it. I didn’t tell her anything about it when it happened, for fear she would laugh at me.”
“You see what a meanie I was?” Judy asked. “Where were you, Horace? I mean when you heard all this.”
“I don’t remember exactly. There was a hollow tree not far from where I was standing, and the voice seemed to come from there. The hole in the tree was small. I remember thinking how much it looked like an open mouth.”
“I know that tree. I used to use the hole to get a toehold when I climbed it. You can see the top of it from here. It’s that big spreading tree beyond the barn. Unless it was an echo,” Judy went on in a puzzled tone, “I don’t see how it could have happened—unless a radio or something of the kind was hidden there.”
“No, there was nothing,” Horace said. “I got up courage enough to look. Nothing larger than a doll could have squeezed inside.”
“One of my dolls, maybe. I used to play with them in the grove.”