There were not many tramps practising in that section of the State.

Anderson Crow proudly announced that they gave Tinkletown a wide berth because of his prowess; but the vagabond gentry took an entirely different view of the question. They did not infest the upper part of the State for the simple but eloquent reason that it meant starvation to them. The farmers compelled the weary wayfarer to work all day like a borrowed horse for a single meal at the "second table." There was no such thing as a "hand-out," as it is known in the tramp's vocabulary. It is not extraordinary, therefore, that tramps found the community so unattractive that they cheerfully walked miles to avoid it. A peculiarly well-informed vagrant once characterised the up-state farmer as being so "close that he never shaved because it was a waste of hair."

It is hardly necessary to state, in view of the att.i.tude of both farmer and tramp, that the misguided vagrant who wandered that way was the object of distinct, if not distinguished, curiosity. In the country roads he was stared at with a malevolence that chilled his appet.i.te, no matter how long he had been cultivating it on barren soil. In the streets of Tinkletown, and even at the county seat, he was an object of such amazing concern that he slunk away in pure distress. It was indeed an unsophisticated tramp who thought to thrive in Bramble County even for a day and a night. In front of the general store and post-office at Tinkletown there was a sign-post, on which Anderson Crow had painted these words:

"No tramps or Live Stock Allowed on these Streets.

By order of A. CROW, Marshal."

The live stock disregarded the command, but the tramp took warning. On rare occasions he may have gone through some of the houses in Tinkletown, but if he went through the streets no one was the wiser.

Anderson Crow solemnly but studiously headed him off in the outskirts, and he took another direction. Twice in his career he drove out tramps who had burglarised the houses of prominent citizens in broad daylight, but what did it matter so long as the "hoboes" were kept from desecrating the main street of the town? Mr. Crow's official star, together with his badge from the New York detective agency, his Sons of the Revolution pin, and his G.A.R. insignia, made him a person to be feared. If the weather became too hot for coat and vest the proud dignitary fastened the badges to his suspenders, and their presence glorified the otherwise humble "galluses."

On the fourth day after the abduction Marshal Crow was suddenly aroused from his lethargy by the news that the peace and security of the neighbourhood was being imposed upon.

"The d.i.c.kens you say!" he observed, abandoning the perpetual grip upon his straggling chin whiskers.

"Yes, sir," responded the excited small boy, who, with two companions, had run himself quite out of breath all over town before he found the officer at Harkin's blacksmith shop.

"Well, dang 'em!" said Mr. Crow impressively.

"We was skatin' in the marsh when we heerd 'em plain as day," said the other boy. "You bet I'm nuvver goin' nigh that house ag'in."

"Sho! Bud, they ain't no sech thing as ghosts," said Mr. Crow; "it's tramps."

"You know that house is ha'nted," protested Bud. "Wasn't ole Mrs. Rank slew there by her son-in-law? Wasn't she chopped to pieces and buried there right in her own cellar?"

"Thunderation, boy, that was thirty year ago!"

"Well, n.o.body's lived in the ha'nted house sence then, has they? Didn't Jim Smith try to sleep there oncet on a bet, an' didn't he hear sech awful noises 'at he liked to went crazy?" insisted Bud.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The haunted house]

"I _do_ recollect that Jim run two mile past his own house before he could stop, he was in sech a hurry to git away from the place. But Jim didn't _see_ anything. Besides, that was twenty year ago. Ghosts don't hang aroun' a place when there ain't nothin' to ha'nt. Her son-in-law was hung, an' she ain't got no one else to pester. I tell you it's tramps."

"Well, we just thought we'd tell you, Mr. Crow," said the first boy.

In a few minutes it was known throughout the business centre of Tinkletown that tramps were making their home in the haunted house down the river, and that Anderson Crow was to ride forth on his bicycle to rout them out. The haunted house was three miles from town and in the most desolate section of the bottomland. It was approachable only through the treacherous swamp on one side or by means of the river on the other. Not until after the murder of its owner and builder, old Johanna Rank, was there an explanation offered for the existence of a home in such an unwholesome locality.

Federal authorities discovered that she and her son-in-law, Dave Wolfe, were at the head of a great counterfeiting gang, and that they had been working up there in security for years, turning out spurious coins by the hundred. One night Dave up and killed his mother-in-law, and was hanged for his good deed before he could be punished for his bad ones.

For thirty years the weather-beaten, ramshackle old cabin in the swamp had been unoccupied except by birds, lizards, and other denizens of the solitude--always, of course, including the ghost of old Mrs. Rank.

Inasmuch as Dave chopped her into small bits and buried them in the cellar, while her own daughter held the lantern, it was not beyond the range of possibility that certain atoms of the unlamented Johanna were never unearthed by the searchers. It was generally believed in the community that Mrs. Rank's spirit came back every little while to nose around in the dirt of the cellar in quest of such portions of her person as had not been respectably interred in the village graveyard.

Mysterious noises had been heard about the place at the dead hour of night, and ghostly lights had flitted past the cellar windows. All Tinkletown agreed that the place was haunted and kept at a most respectful distance. The three small boys who startled Marshal Crow from his moping had gone down the river to skate instead of going to school.

They swore that the sound of m.u.f.fled voices came from the interior of the cabin, near which they had inadvertently wandered. Although Dave Wolfe had been dead thirty years, one of the youngest of the lads was positive that he recognised the voice of the desperado. And at once the trio fled the 'cursed spot and brought the horrifying news to Anderson Crow. The detective was immediately called upon to solve the ghostly mystery.

Marshal Crow first went to his home and donned his blue coat, transferring the stars and badges to the greasy lapel of the garment. He also secured his dark lantern and the official cane of the village, but why he should carry a cane on a bicycle expedition was known only to himself. Followed by a horde of small boys and a few representative citizens of Tinkletown on antiquated wheels, Mr. Crow pedalled majestically off to the south. Skirting the swamp, the party approached the haunted house over the narrow path which ran along the river bank.

Once in sight of the dilapidated cabin, which seemed to slink farther and farther back into the dense shadows of the late afternoon, with all the diffidence of the supernatural, the marshal called a halt and announced his plans.

"You kids go up an' tell them fellers I want to see 'em," he commanded.

The boys fell back and prepared to whimper.

"I don't want to," protested Bud.

"Why don't you go an' tell 'em yourself, Anderson?" demanded Isaac Porter, the pump repairer.

"Thunderation, Ike, who's runnin' this thing?" retorted Anderson Crow.

"I got a right to deputise anybody to do anything at any time. Don't you s'pose I know how to handle a job like this? I got my own idees how to waylay them raskils, an' I reckon I been in the detectin' business long enough to know how to manage a gol-derned tramp, ain't I? How's that?

Who says I ain't?"

"n.o.body said a word, Anderson," meekly observed Jim Borum.

"Well, I _thought_ somebody did. An' I don't want n.o.body interferin'

with an officer, either. Bud, you an' them two Heffner boys go up an'

tell them loafers to step down here right spry er I'll come up there an'

see about it."

"Gosh, Mr. Crow, I'm a-skeered to!" whimpered Bud. The Heffner boys started for home on a dead run.

"Askeered to?" sniffed Anderson. "An' your great-grand-dad was in the Revolution, too. Geminy crickets, ef you was my boy I'd give you somethin' to be askeered of! Now, Bud, nothin' kin happen to you. Ain't I here?"

"But suppose they won't come when I tell 'em?"

"Yes, 'n' supposin' 'tain't tramps, but ghosts?" volunteered Mr. Porter, edging away with his bicycle. It was now quite dark and menacing in there where the cabin stood. As the outcome of half an hour's discussion, the whole party advanced slowly upon the house, Anderson Crow in the lead, his dark lantern in one hand, his cane in the other.

Half way to the house he stopped short and turned to Bud.

"Gosh dern you, Bud! I don't believe you heerd any noise in there at all! There ain't no use goin' any further with this, gentlemen. The dern boys was lyin'. We might jest as well go home." And he would have started for home had not Isaac Porter uttered a fearful groan and staggered back against a swamp reed for support, his horrified eyes glued upon a window in the log house. The reed was inadequate, and Isaac tumbled over backward.

For a full minute the company stared dumbly at the indistinct little window, paralysis attacking every sense but that of sight. At the expiration of another minute the place was deserted, and Anderson Crow was the first to reach the bicycles far up the river bank. Every face was as white as chalk, and every voice trembled. Mr. Crow's dignity a.s.serted itself just as the valiant posse prepared to "straddle" the wheels in mad flight.

"Hold on!" he panted. "I lost my dark lantern down there. Go back an'

git it, Bud."

"Land o' mighty! Did y'ever see anythin' like it?" gasped Jim Borum, trying to mount a ten-year-old boy's wheel instead of his own.

"I'd like to have anybody tell me there ain't no sech things as ghosts,"

faltered Uncle Jimmy Borton, who had always said there wasn't. "Let go, there! Ouch!" The command and subsequent exclamation were the inevitable results of his unsuccessful attempt to mount with Elon Jones the same wheel.

"What'd I tell you, Anderson?" exclaimed Isaac Porter. "Didn't I say it was ghosts? Tramps nothin'! A tramp wouldn't last a second up in that house. It's been ha'nted fer thirty years an' it gits worse all the time. What air we goin' to do next?"

Even the valiant Mr. Crow approved of an immediate return to Tinkletown, and the posse was trying to disentangle its collection of bicycles when an interruption came from an unsuspected quarter--a deep, masculine voice arose from the ice-covered river hard by, almost directly below that section of the bank on which Anderson and his friends were herded.

The result was startling. Every man leaped a foot in the air and every hair stood on end; bicycles rattled and clashed together, and Ed Higgins, hopelessly bewildered, started to run in the direction of the haunted house.

CHAPTER XVII