Suddenly, as Peter glanced in the direction where the old leaning gravestones were wrapped in darkness, he saw something which harrowed his very soul and made his blood run cold. One of those stones was bathed in a dim, shadowy light. It was startling to see just one stone and no others. It was not a light so much as an area of gossamer brightness that enveloped it, a kind of gauze shroud. Peter gazed, unable to stir, his breaths coming short and fast. Then this dim shroud left the tombstone and glided slowly through the graveyard, shedding its hovering brightness upon a small area of the stone wall as it crossed, and came steadily, steadily over toward Peter Piper.
CHAPTER XXII
HARK! THE CONQUERING HERO COMES
"What the dickens is this, anyway; a cemetery?" said Mr. Swiper, poking the finding light this way and that as the car of a thousand delights came slowly up toward the bend. "It's some rocky road to Dublin, all right."
He cast the light along the dark road behind them and looked apprehensively back as far as he could see. Evidently there was no cause for fear there and he dropped the car of a thousand delights into second gear and picked his way along the narrow, rocky way, below the bend. "I guess it will be better when we get around here," he said; "we have to watch our step in this jungle. Nice place to build a church, huh?" He threw the finding light upon the little edifice ahead and brightened the small stained-glass window, casting a soft reflection upon Deacon Small's slanting marble slab nearby.
The small figure in a gray sweater with a rather tough look, cap drawn over his round face, who sat huddled up alongside the driver seemed not to partake of the delights which the big car claimed to furnish. He seemed chilled and very much worried. He looked wistfully ahead at the graveyard where the strange, soft, reflected light shone.
"The people around here haven't got any 'phones," he said. "Anyways what's the use 'phoning Mr. Bartlett because he'll only be in bed. If we're going straight to Bridgeboro, gee whiz, what's the good of 'phoning? What's the use waking people up around here, even if they have got 'phones? Gee whiz, you're acting awful funny. Why didn't you ask me to 'phone when we were passing through a village?"
"You're going to get out and 'phone when I tell you to; see?" said our friend, the manual training teacher. "And you ain't going to give me no sass neither, understand? I don't let kids tell me my business."
"You just want to get rid of me, that's what," said Pee-wee. "Gee, you might as well say what you mean, I'm not scared."
"Oh, ain't you? Well you do as I tell you and you'll be all right. You do as I tell you if you want to get a ride home; see? Mr. Bartlett and me are grown-up men, we are, and we know what's the right way to do. When a kid is told to do something he's gotter do it. You know so much about them scout kids; don't you know that?