It sounded farther and farther off until it was drowned in the distant moaning.
“It’s he,” Warde whispered, his voice tense.
“I know where it is; come on,” said Roy.
CHAPTER XXII
THE BANSHEE
“What does it mean, anyway?” Warde asked, as he followed Roy, breathless and in suspense. “What are we going to do? Has he got some–some–accomplice–”
“Follow me,” was all that Roy said.
“The troop–if we’re in danger–”
“Never mind the troop; follow me.”
Silently Roy sped along into an overgrown cross street, cutting through the doorless wreck of the Y. M. C. A. shack, over the litter within, and out on the opposite side. A tall, spectral shadow soon confronted them, whence emanated that ghostly voice, loud and beseeching, as they approached. Their nearness to it dispelled any thought of its being the inanimate sounds of wind-stirred wreckage or of some unknown living creature. It moaned and cried like no voice they had ever heard before. Yet it was strangely human. The crying of that fleeing, bewildered apparition was silent now, and there seemed a note of gloomy solace in the low, plaintive strain.