CHAPTER XI.

WHEN THE RAT SCRATCHED.

It was almost dark.

These lads were accustomed to camping out, and believed that they knew nearly all about the many sounds likely to be heard in the woods around that region. However, the fact that stories had been told about the old mill being haunted gave several of them an uneasy feeling.

Since few persons ever came up here, there having been no grist in the hopper of the mill for many years, Nature had taken back her own. Everywhere bushes, vines, briars and weeds abounded, and the little wild animals frisked about under the trees as though they looked upon that spot as their especial domain.

Night birds, too, began to croak and utter their various doleful cries, particularly a family of screech owls that called to one another with whinnies and long-drawn loving notes.

Then there was the constant fretful murmur of the water, dripping over the moss-covered wheel of the mill, or forcing a passage through crevices of the dam. Taken all together, things conspired to make some of the boys shrug their shoulders, and keep rather close to their mates under the conviction that there is strength in union.

Besides all this they could not forget that they meant to assail a couple of “tough nuts,” as Billy called the pair of hobo yeggmen in the