The group had paused with their burden at the door and Pat had turned
on his pocket flash light for just an instant as they fumbled with an
ancient lock. In that instant the whole front of the old stone house
was lit up clearly, and Billy gasped. The haunted house! The
house on the far mountain where a man had murdered his brother and then
hanged himself. It had stood empty and closed for years, ever since
Billy could remember, and was shunned and regarded with awe, and
pointed out by hunters as a local point of interest.
Billy regarded with contempt the superstition that hung around the
place, but he gasped when he saw where he was, for they must have come
twenty miles round about and it was at least ten across the mountains
by the short cut. Ten miles from home, and he had to foot it! If he had
only brought old trusty! No telling now whether he would ever see it
again. But what were bicycles at such a time as this!
The flash had gone out and the house was in darkness again, but he
could hear the grating of a rusty hinge as the door opened, and faint
footfalls of rubbered feet shuffled on a dusty floor. Now was his time!
He darted out to the back of the car, and stooping down with his face
close to the license, holding his old cap in one hand to shelter it
drew out his own pocket flash and turned it on the sign, registering
the number clearly on his alert young mind. The flash light was on its
last breath of battery, and blinked asthmatically, winking out into a
thread of red as the boy pressed it eagerly for one more look. He had
been so intent that he had not heard the rubbered feet till they were
almost upon him, and he had barely time to spring back into the bushes.
"Hist! What was that?" whispered Pat, and the three stopped motionless
in their tracks. Billy held his breath and touched the cold steel in
his pocket. Of course there was always the gun, but what was one gun
against three?