“I shouldn’t think he would come back here to the Meeker House,” suggested Grant. “I should think his ghost would ‘hang’ around the court house up at Goshen.”
“I can’t tell you about that,” said George, “but it may be that he follows the road he used to travel. That may be the reason why part of the time he’s here at the old Meeker House.”
“He must have been a great boy,” suggested Fred.
“He certainly was, and he wasn’t the only one. I have heard my father tell about a man here in Jersey named Fagan. He was one of the Cowboys that they used to call the Pine Robbers.”
“Who were they?” inquired John.
“Why there were a dozen or more bands of these Pine Robbers. They used to make their headquarters in the Pines back of Lakewood. They would dig a hole in the sand and hide in it the stuff they had stolen, and then, when they had enough to make up a cargo they would take it to Toms River and ship it to New York, where William Franklin helped them dispose of it.”
“Who was William Franklin?” demanded Grant.
“Why, every educated man knows that William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey. He was the son of old Ben Franklin. He inherited his father’s brains, but not his father’s disposition. He was one of the bitterest of all the Tories, and when the war of the Revolution broke out he went to New York to be with his friends.”
“What happened to this man Fagan?” asked Fred. “Is his ghost around here, too?”
“I can’t tell you,” replied George, “whether it is here or not. I know Fagan got to be such a bad man stealing, shooting, tormenting the women and children that finally a big gang of men took after him and caught him down here between Trenton and Freehold.”