“What’s the matter?” Skippy asked sympathetically.
Timmy grinned. “I been in that dark house so long, my eyes don’t know howta act, that’s all.” He took a long, deep breath of the murky air as if it were the utmost luxury. Then suddenly his thin, pale face became almost colorless and he nodded toward the right of the clearing. “Look!” he gasped.
The other boys turned and saw a huge evergreen tree spreading its branches over the sinister house. Not a breath of air rustled its broad boughs—it seemed to stand there waiting.
“The tree in my dream!” Timmy said, trembling. “I never seen it till now! When I come here it’s night an’ I don’t notice it. I never looked out front—just now it’s the first....”
“What’s he talking about?” Devlin said, annoyed, from the top of the stoop.
“About that tree!” Nickie said, with ill-concealed contempt. “He had a terrible dream bout it last night—see?”
Devlin bit his lip and frowned. “It’s nonsense! What’s wrong with you, Timmy, eh?”
“What wouldn’t be wrong, hah?” Nickie retorted sullenly. “If he’d stayed in the pen he wouldn’t got no worse treatment than you give him—shuttin’ him up a month in this hole till he’s all shot. I ain’t sayin’ that it ain’t better late than never, but even up in Delafield they don’t keep a guy shut away from the daylight. Timmy or none of us asked you to spring us so you might give us a break an’ treat us like human bein’s.”
Devlin’s lips were set and grim and his beetle brows were so drawn that they made a deep furrow above his large nose. “Listen, you,” he said angrily, “any more talk like that from you and you’ll regret it. I’m running this and whether you did or didn’t ask to be sprung, makes no difference. You’ll keep your mouth shut—understand!”
The Greeks, smiling and silent until then, emitted a sound of dismay. Nickie mumbled something under his breath but made no other answer for the warning note in Devlin’s voice was not to be misunderstood. Skippy gulped, and just then they heard the unmistakable sound of an old car chugging along through the narrow swamp trail.