“Oh, deader’n a mummy,” the man said. “When the world war come some folks said as haow that pair might a been German spies all th’ while, kind uv studying ’raound. But young Snookbeck he says if old Ebenezer had anything hid it would be in his Bible, en’ ’s long ’s ’tain’t thar, ’tain’t nowhere. But that’s treasure hid somewhere, I say, ’cause them wuz mighty funny doin’s of them strangers. Yer goin’ ter th’ reunion over t’ ’he Cross-roads?”
CHAPTER XXX—WE MAKE A PROMISE
As soon as we had started, Brent said, “Well, it doesn’t look half bad, does it?”
“Do you know who those fellows were? Do you know who those fellows were?” our young hero fairly screamed.
“I think they came from Mars,” Brent said; “that’s the way it looks to me.”
I said, “You can joke but it’s pretty serious.”
“They were smugglers that’s what they were,” Pee-wee shouted.
“They were either smugglers or book-agents,” Brent said. “In either case they deserved to be murdered. Maybe they were introducing a new kind of soap——”
“You make me sick,” Pee-wee yelled; “there’s treasure somewhere and we’re going to find it! It’s at HW limit, it said so, HW means something about hollow well, I bet you.”
Brent said, “Maybe it means hot waffles; there’s a whole table d’hote dinner in that paper. Maybe it means Hamburger wheat cakes. Anyway, the Ohio River is a long way from Barrow’s Homestead.”