"Not unless I have to," replied Henry Burns. "You may hear it, and perhaps you won't."
All was desolate and deserted, as they made a circuit of the surroundings of the mill. It certainly offered no attractions to visitors, after nightfall. The crazy old structure, unpainted and blackened with age, made a dark, dismal picture against the dull sky. The water fell with a monotonous roar over the dam; the cold dripping of water sounded within the shell of the mill. The wind, by fits and starts, rattled loose boards and set stray shingles tattooing here and there. Dust blew down from the roadway.
"He'll not be out to-night," remarked Harvey, as they looked up the road in the direction of the Half Way House.
"You can't tell," replied John Ellison. "We've seen the light in here some nights that were as bad as this. What say, shall we go in?"
They followed his lead, around by the way Henry Burns and Harvey had once before entered, and, one by one, went in through the window. Then they paused, huddled on a plank, while John Ellison scratched a match and lighted a sputtering lantern, the wick of which had become dampened. Across the planking they picked their way, and entered the main room on the first floor.
Then Henry Burns and John Ellison made another trip and brought in Henry Burns's "fiddle," greatly to the amusement of the others.
"That goes on the top floor," said Henry Burns, and they ascended the two flights of stairs with it, depositing it upside down, in a corner of the garret that was boarded up as a separate room, or large closet. Then Henry Burns, producing from his pocket a piece of closely woven cotton rope, skilfully tossed one end over a beam above his head; seized the end as it fell, quickly tied a running knot and hauled it snug. The rope, made fast thus at one end to the beam, drew taut as he pulled down on it.
"That's the fiddle-string, eh Jack?" laughed Henry Burns. "We've made a horse-fiddle before now, haven't we? that rope's got so much resin on it that it squeaks if you just look at it."
He passed the free end of the resined rope through a hole in the bottom of the upturned wash-boiler, and knotted it so it would not pull out again.
"Now where's the fiddle-bow, John?" he asked.