CHAPTER IV
THE FIGURE IN THE MOONLIGHT
"You couldn't beat this much, I'd say, if you want to know my opinion," Ethan was remarking, after they had finished the meal and were taking things easy.
"Of course we all feel pretty much the same way," admitted X-Ray Tyson; "but I'd be a whole lot better satisfied if I knew about that bright new half-dollar. Is it a good one, or a bunker?"
"Chances are we'll hear no end to that squall all the time we're up here," Ethan went on to say, with a pretended look of disgust on his thin Yankee face. "Whenever you do get a thing on your mind, X-Ray, you sure beat all creation to keep yawping about it. Forget that you ever picked up the fifty, and let's be thinking only of the royal good times we're meaning to have."
"What can that sound be?" suddenly remarked Lub, who had been listening more or less apprehensively for some little time now; "seems like some one might be sawing a hole through the wall. Course, though, I don't believe that for a minute; but all the same it's a queer noise. There, don't you hear it?"
There did come a distinct little "rat-tat-tat," several times repeated. No one who was not deaf could have helped hearing such a distinct sound; but Lub could not see that any of his mates seemed bothered.
"May be that old gray squirrel gnawing somewhere," suggested X-Ray; "they've got long teeth like a rat, and can chew a hole through any sort of board."