“Why, stranger,” the woman continued, “boats have been pushed directly into them lights as they floated on the surface of the river, and they have burned right on after being submerged! Them explosions have been heard time and time again, and nothing has been found which could have produced them. We people along the river are mighty skeery of them ghost lights.”
“I have heard that they bring disaster,” Clay suggested.
“They sure do!” replied the woman. “But come in,” she went on, “here I’ve been talkin’ like a foolish old gossip, and you standing hungry in the doorway. Come in and sit down.”
Clay took the proffered chair but he was not thinking of the breakfast being prepared for him.
He was thinking, instead, of the sudden panic into which the old woman had fallen at the mention of the three blue lights. He saw now that there was some significance to the signal.
He came to understand, sitting there watching the still troubled face of the woman, that the three blue lights indicated some desperate action on the part of the river people—some desperate action which took the men away from their homes and left the women anxious and afraid. He saw that the woman in trying to deceive him by her words was still telling the story of some terrible situation by her voice and manner. He wondered but could reach no conclusion.
The boy was supplied with a bountiful breakfast of corn pancakes, fried eggs and coffee, and then he opened negotiations with his hostess for a supply of provisions for the _Rambler_. The woman looked distressed and answered his inquiries with downcast eyes.
“I’m sure sorry,” she said, “but we had a lot of friends here to dinner yesterday, and they eat about everything in the house. Them eggs you’ve just et were laid this morning.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Clay replied, “but if you haven’t got provisions, you can’t sell them. Perhaps I can find a supply at some near-by farm house. How far is it to the nearest one?”
“It is a long way through the thicket,” the woman answered, “and I wouldn’t advise no boy like you to be wandering in the woods in this vicinity right now. It ain’t safe!”
“Why, there ought not to be anything to be afraid of!” Clay suggested.
“You don’t know this region as well as I do, boy!” the woman replied. “These folks that come up from the river are mighty bad sometimes, and I’ve known people that didn’t live on the river to do desperate, bad things occasionally.”