It was a long and awesome journey to the bottom of the stairway and once there they had a whispered consultation as to whether to go around through the rooms to the kitchen or march straight past the cellar door and so on into the room. Skippy decided on keeping to the hall even though it meant passing the door to the dim regions below.
They had not taken two steps in that direction, when Nickie gave vent to a blood-curdling scream.
"_My foot!_" Nickie was gasping in the dark. "Sump'n run over my foot!"
"_A rat!_" Skippy said, disgustedly. "I said to shut that cellar door, Nickie!"
"Oh my head!" Nickie groaned. "I was scared skinny. Kid, let's run."
Skippy was human enough to accede and they made the kitchen in one breath-taking bound.
Nickie let go his hold on the other's arm. "Whew!" he said nervously. "Gimme a match."
"Yeah, that's what I say," Skippy said, moving noisily about the room. "They ain't on this stove--I've felt all over. Say, you lit that lantern we took up to the attic."
"Sure, I did. Wha'd I do with them matches?" Nickie asked himself desperately.
It was another day before he found out, and in the interim they had decided that there was no other room in the house which offered the comparative peace of their own room. At least they could shut themselves in there. And that they did, not stopping until they had pushed their heavy bed tight against the stout oaken door.
"What we afraid of, huh?" Skippy asked in a small voice. They had undressed and were in bed.
"I dunno, kid!" Nickie admitted honestly. "I'm kinda broke up in a hundred pieces like, since that scream."
"That's why I ast if you believe'n spooks!"
"Nickie! Gee whiz, we heard Timmy talkin'--didn't he tell us twas all a trick with Devlin--didn't he say Devlin meant to kill him and...."
"Yeah, an' ain't that like his dream the other night? Ain't it like he comes back in his dream an' stands under that big tree? Ain't it all in his dream how he's tellin' us up at the winder an' warnin' us, when zip, he sees this arm come out an' pretty soon he feels like he's chokin'? How do we know he ain't kicked off somehow last night an' tonight he comes back from the dead, hah?"
Frightened as he was, Skippy could not help smiling into the darkness. "Say, I thought you was a real tough guy when I first spotted you. An' here you're talkin' bout spooks an' comin' back from the dead like you're a regular sissy."