“Hush!”
The cry arose again, but was more faint than before.
“What kind of game are they giving us?” muttered Jefferson Arnold. “Is it a screech owl?”
Jai Singh, without speaking, picked up his spear and waited for what was to come.
For the third time the scream sounded through the forest—long drawn out and ending in a sobbing wail.
“It is the devils of the forest. There are unclean spirits walking near,” muttered Jai Singh.
“Spirits or no spirits, clean or unclean,” said Nick Carter. “I am going to see.”
He struck a match, but, so powerful was the ghostly influence even upon the detective’s usually steady nerves, that his hand shook, and he dropped the match.
Perhaps he did not try much to hold it, for it seemed to him, even as the light broke out, that it was hardly a wise thing to do until he knew what was in the vicinity.
“I have my flash light in my pocket,” he muttered to himself. “But, on the whole, I guess we’d better investigate in the dark.”