“Nun-nothing there, anyhow,” said Phil.
“Nothing that anybody need be afraid of,” declared Piper. But his teeth clicked, and his voice was filled with an odd vibration that betrayed the agitation he sought to conceal.
“I’m going in,” said Rodney. “Let’s all go in, so that at least we can say we’ve done so.”
“Lot of good that will dud-do us,” muttered Springer.
“Here goes,” said Grant, stepping inside.
Moved by a sudden desperate impulse, Piper pushed Springer aside and followed Rodney.
“If you’re afraid,” he flung back at Phil, “you don’t have to come; you can stay out.”
“Who’s afraid?” indignantly snapped Springer. “I guess I’ve gug-got as much nerve as you have.”
He entered also, and the three boys stood there in the hut of the old hermit. Their feet were on the bare ground, for there had never been a floor.
Dimly, at one side of the hut, they could see the framework of a bunk, on which, doubtless, Old Lonely had drawn his last breath, with the faithful dog watching at his side. A chimney, made of stones and clay mortar, had, with the lurching of the hut, broken in two halfway to the roof, and it now seemed ready to come tumbling down in one mass. The stones of the fireplace had been torn up, and doubtless this was the work of those who had fancied it possible some of the man’s plunder might be found beneath them.