“We owe him a good turn, Mason,” continued Miles Burton, “for finding Craigie for us.”
The man addressed as Mason was the detective that had followed Craigie as far as Mayville.
“Yes,” he replied, shaking hands with Henry Burns, “we’ve been after him a long time.”
The other two men, whose names were Stapleton and Watkins, also shook hands with the boy. They were sharp-eyed, athletic-looking men, whose appearance on the island boded no good to one Craigie, alias Kemble.
Under the guidance of Henry Burns they all set off down the road for a distance, then turned from it and made their way through the fields and patches of woods toward the bluff. It was hard walking there in the darkness, through thickets and over little knolls, with which some of the pastures were dotted, and it was nearly one o’clock in the morning when they reached the old haunted house.
The house looked even less inviting than ever in the waning moonlight, with its sagging roof, dull and broken window-panes, and doors unhinged. Still, to those free from superstition and not fearful of ghosts, it offered a sufficient shelter on a summer night, and they entered at a rear doorway, after making a cautious reconnoisance to make certain that there was no one within.
Then, having shown them where the jewels had been buried, and pointing out the location of a spring of good water near the house, Henry Burns left the four detectives to accommodate themselves to their lodgings and went down to the shore. There in the shadow of a bluff he found Tom and Bob waiting for him in the canoe, as they had agreed.
When the canoe grated on the sand in front of the tent, Henry Burns, worn out with his travels, was fast asleep. So Tom and Bob, by way of a joke, lifted up the canoe with its sleeping occupant and carried it to the door of their tent. They thrust it inside as far as it would go, laid Henry Burns out flat in the bottom of it, made him comfortable with blankets, without waking him from his heavy sleep, and let him slumber on.
CHAPTER X.
A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE
The inhabitants of the peaceful town of Southport would have viewed the old haunted house with more concern than ever if they had known of the four ghosts that haunted it now, by day and night. They were stalwart, able-bodied looking ghosts, and their habits were strangely like what might have been expected of four live men. Sometimes, as they sat in one of the front garret rooms, by a window that overlooked the town and the whole expanse of the cove lying between it and the bluff, as well as the bay beyond, a well-worn pack of cards was produced by one of the spirits, and the four joined in a game. Or, again, a bag was brought forth, and the spirits ate heartily of the contents thereof.